There is a story I heard about this, but I can't verify if it is true; though it does come from a professor of the field who could have contacts there at the ti

There is a story I heard about this, but I can't verify if it is true; though it does come from a professor of the field who could have contacts there at the time. Internally Intel knew about the bug before release but they dismissed it as minor, despite warnings from a certain engineer. Once the bug got out, Intels' top executives had a meeting on how to avert the disaster. After the meeting where difficult decisions were made (the cost of replacement and marketing to regain the trust of the consumers was huge), this certain engineer went to the CEO and said “I told you”. The CEO answered “You are fired”. This engineer then went to AMD where he had a key role to AMD K6 and Athlon lines which gave Intel much trouble with their performance. Maybe the story is fake, but it sounds interesting. :)