From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Nov 9 11:42:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id LAA00667 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 9 Nov 1997 11:42:42 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from phoenix.its.rpi.edu (phoenix.its.rpi.edu [128.113.161.45]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id LAA00658 for ; Sun, 9 Nov 1997 11:42:35 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dec@phoenix.its.rpi.edu) Received: from localhost (dec@localhost) by phoenix.its.rpi.edu (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id OAA24593; Sun, 9 Nov 1997 14:42:38 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from dec@phoenix.its.rpi.edu) Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 14:42:37 -0500 (EST) From: "David E. Cross" To: Howard Lew cc: Tony Kimball , hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Newest Pentium bug (fatal) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sat, 8 Nov 1997, Howard Lew wrote: > On Sat, 8 Nov 1997, Tony Kimball wrote: > > > ! Compared with the aforementioned > > ! floating-point bug, this seems like a much bigger deal. > > > > No, the FP bug was infinitely worse, because it would silently give > > wrong answers. You could crash the Thai Bhat by accident with an old > > Pentium chip. In this case, the machine is locked -- no one is going The floating point bug could be corrected in software by the OS fairly easily (in fact it has on windows, not sure about FreeBSD), this can't to my knowledge, unless you are going to have your OS's check each opcode before it is executed (for CS people out there that is O(really-nasty) ;). my $0.02. -- David Cross