In Tom R. Halfhill's March piece, "The Truth Behind the Pentium Bug," his instructions on how to bruise an integer (page 164) are mind-boggling. I tried the test on several different Pentium machines and they all gave me the binary 10 from the difference of 4.1 and 1.1. When I tried it on our newest Pentium 100, I got the same binary, 10. All our 486 machines gave me 10 as well. I tried a different test I acquired from another magazine and found which systems were using a faulty chip. I wonder if Intel is replacing Pentium chips that are not faulty at all?
Cesar Quebral
Legend23@ix.netcom.com
Integer bruising happens on almost all computers, not just a buggy Pentium. The example I gave was not to reveal whether or not you've got a bad Pentium but to demonstrate how integers can get bruised on any computer.
--Tom R.
Halfhill
Flexible C++
Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it
is
theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.
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