Pentium Jokes: The FDIV Bug

>> Is there a list of Pentium jokes? I NEED one! :-)

> No, no. You meant to say you need .999856738903.

You want a list?? Here is .999856738903.

Q&A's

Q: How many Pentium designers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: 1.99904274017, but that's close enough for non-technical people.
Q: What do you get when you cross a Pentium PC with a research grant?
A: A mad scientist.
Q: What's another name for the "Intel Inside" sticker they put on Pentiums?
A: Warning label.
Q: What do you call a series of FDIV instructions on a Pentium?
A: Successive approximations.
Q: Complete the following word analogy: Add is to Subtract as Multiply is to
  1. Divide
  2. Round
  3. Random
  4. On a Pentium, all of the above
A: Number 4.
Q: What algorithm did Intel use in the Pentium's floating point divider?
A: "Life is like a box of chocolates." (Source: F. Gump of Intel)
Q: Why didn't Intel call the Pentium the 586?
A: Because they added 486 and 100 on the first Pentium and got 585.999983605.
Q: According to Intel, the Pentium conforms to the IEEE standards 754 and 854 for floating point arithmetic. If you fly in aircraft designed using a Pentium, what is the correct pronunciation of "IEEE"?
A: Aaaaaaaiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee!
Q: What new instruction are Intel working on?
A: BDV - Branch Davidian.
Q: What is Intel's follow-on to the Pentium?
A: Repentium.
Q: What does the element Pentium decay into?
A: Inert silicon with the emission of a press release.
Q: What do you call a series of FDIV instructions on a Pentium?

A1: Successive approximations.
A2: A random number generator.
A3: Or a really expensive space heater.

Q: What's the difference between an Intel Pentium and a Ford Pinto?
A: None, really: the flaw and the company's attitude about it really burn you.
Q: What's the difference between a Thalidomide pill and a Pentium chip?
A: One causes deformities on the outside, and the other is deformed on the inside.
Q: How do you use a Pentium machine so that you get correct calculations?
A: Steady your hands against it so you are not shaking your slide ruler.
Q: What's the difference between Intel's executives and Richard Nixon?
A: Even Nixon had ethics once in a while.
Q: You are at a remote research station. If you had a choice between a bag full of Pentium chips and a bag full of nacho chips, which would you choose?
A: The nacho chips. Both bags will give you heartburn, but at least the nachos would help you survive.
Q: You have heartburn because of your Pentium microcomputer. How do you spell relief?
A: P - o - w... e - r - P - C....
Q: Did you hear about the new "morning after" pill being developed as a replacement for RU-486???
A: It's called RU-Pentium. It causes the embryo to not divide correctly.

- But it is funnier if the new pill is called Preventium. That's what was used a year or two ago when the above joke (without the divide part, of course!) made the rounds.

Top Ten Intel Excuses for faulty Pentium

  1. You mean 2.00000000 + 2.000000000 doesn't equal 3.999998456?
  2. We felt sorry for all those competitors of ours who can't seem to sell anywhere near as many processors as we do.
  3. Emulate THIS, Power PC!
  4. Hey, look! We've got a built-in random number generator! (Quick, jack-up the price...)
  5. The FDIV bug? That's nothing! Wait'll you see what happens when you try to run Windows 95!
  6. We were trying to outfox AMD by tricking them into making a processor that works, thus rendering them incompatible!
  7. Hey, buddy, we'd like to see YOU hook up 3.3 million transistors right the first time!
  8. Actually, the whole thing's a documentation error. The manual mixed up the opcodes of FDIV with another instruction, FATRA - Floating Point Almost The Right Answer.
  9. That's the way it's supposed to work. It's part of our new fuzzy logic support.
  10. We don't care. We don't have to. We're INTEL!

Top Ten Excuses Why QT Emulation Didn't Find the Pentium FPU Bug

  1. Intel couldn't afford to buy enough QT hardware in order to verify beyond 5 decimal places.
  2. Actually did find the problem but didn't want to say anything because, "We're shy."
  3. Spent more time verifying QT hardware than Intel hardware.
  4. Decided it was more important to verify all the obscure undocumented opcodes that nobody knows about than it was to see if the math was actually correct.
  5. Figured if there were any problems with the chip could always fix it by doing a slingshot around the sun and going back in time like in Star Trek.
  6. Intel used a 486 PC to check the math on the Pentium emulator.
  7. Money Intel spent for QT emulators actually went to buy hookers and booze for Andy Grove.
  8. Didn't do an exhaustive check of all the math functions. Got as far as 2 + 2 = 5 and figured that was good enough.
  9. Pentium testing consisted mostly of playing tetris until a score of 100,000 was achieved.
  10. There was an FPU in that thing?

Top Ten New Intel Slogans for the Pentium

9.9999973251 - It's a FLAW, Dammit, not a Bug
8.9999163362 - It's Close Enough, We Say So
7.9999414610 - Nearly 300 Correct Opcodes
6.9999831538 - You Don't Need to Know What's Inside
5.9999835137 - Redefining the PC - and Mathematics As Well
4.9999999021 - We Fixed It, Really
3.9998245917 - Division Considered Harmful
2.9991523619 - Why Do You Think They Call It *Floating* Point?
1.9999103517 - We're Looking for a Few Good Flaws
0.9999999998 - The Errata Inside

The Top Ten Reasons to Buy a Pentium Machine

  1. Your current computer is too accurate
  2. You want to get into the Guinness Book as "Owner of Most Expensive Paperweight"
  3. Math errors add zest to life
  4. You need an alibi for the I.R.S.
  5. You want to see what all the fuss is about
  6. You've always wondered what it would be like to be a plaintiff
  7. The "Intel Inside" logo matches your decor perfectly
  8. You no longer have to worry about CPU overheating
  9. You got a great deal from JPL

And the #1 reason to buy a Pentium machine:

  1. It'll probably work

New Slogans

Intel Inside, but can it divide?!?

A slogan that didn't make it onto the released version of the Intel Slogan list:

Close enough for government work.

The 0.000000000001th new Intel slogan for the Pentium:

We give you the most megaflops.

Pentium =

Practically Everyone Now Thinks It's Useless for Math
Produces Erroneous Numbers Through Incorrect Understanding of Mathematics
Processor Errors Numbering Thousands In Users Machines

Intel =

Incredibly Nonchalantly Telling Evil Lies
I Never Test Enough Logic

Intel Inside

"Intel Inside!,"
Intel vied,
with ample pride
world wide
in guide
"Proven and tried!".

"Intel Inside!"

Budgets sighed;
millions buyed;
RISC sales dried
like ancient bride.

"Intel Inside?"

Can't divide!
Scientists cried,
fit to be tied,
and numbers fried.

"Intel Inside?"

Can't divide!!
Pi's pied
when FDIV died
and accuracy denied.

"Intel Inside?"

Can't divide?
Executives hide
from "outside"
during Intel bide
on warranty decide.

"Intel Inside?"

Can't divide?!!
See "Thalidomide".
(Taken for a ride.)

Intel lied.
The Pentium says:

4195835 - (4195835 / 3145727) * 3145727 = 256

- But is it right? Hmm, figure it out in your head, and you're more accurate than the Pentium....

Pentium specification errata:

        Addition       -> Ambition
        Subtraction    -> Distraction
        Multiplication -> Uglification
        Division       -> Derision; i.e. LDIV -> LDER
Please update your manuals. 
        2 + 2 = 100         (base 2)
              =  11         (base 3)
              =  10         (base 4)
              =   4         (base 5 and higher)
              =   3.9998736 (base unit containing a Pentium)
"Intel, you have a LOT of explaining to do!"
Did you hear Intel's new motto?
"United we stand, divided we fall."
News Flash ... (that used to be news eprom ...)

There is no national debt!!! The country's books have been kept on a Pentium, and everything is really OK.

- Details at 11, after Bill (that's Clinton, not Gates) gets Quicken installed on the national Mac.

On the tee-shirt of an inlined skater in Mountain View: <Intel Inside logo>:
"I asked for a refund on my Pentium, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
The Pentium doesn't have bugs or produce errors; it's just Precision-Impaired.
Intel business executives have been so stressed by staying up late at night trying to figure out what to do about the Pentium Problem, that they're past the floating point.
I heard that Intel lost one of its divisions today ....
"Intel Inside: What's a few places of innacuracy? Who needed more than 3.14 anyways?"
Intel extends the IEEE floating point standard.
In addition to NaN's (Not a Number's), they also have NaA's (Not an Answer's).
At Intel, Quality is Job .99999998!!

- This semi-plagiarized from "At Microsoft, Quality is Job 1.1!"

How about a T Shirt with a take off of the Intel logo - "Intel Outside".

... or "Intel Offside"....

Or, on a takeoff of Sony's slogan "My First Sony," a sticker saying "My Last Intel" that we can all put on our machines.

New logo for IBM, DEC, HP, Compaq, etc. PC's: 'Intel Aside'.
Secondary products resulting from the impact of excited Pentium particles on stone walls include 'Resentium' and assorted Alpha particles.
Intel has finally located the bug in the Pentium's floating point unit:
It was a praying mantissa. (Praying for precision, no doubt.)
Intel - The new standard of accuracy.
Pentium, the computer your kids can relate to:
It can't do fractions either.
I wonder...
Does Intel use a buggy Pentium to calculate the quarterly dividends for its stockholders? An interesting question, to be sure.
Something is for sure: Intel used a Pentium to calculate the 27000 years it takes to give an error.
Quality is undividable...
...or is it?
I have a 100 MHz Pentium based computer and would like to point out that -
Despite of recent negative reports - this machine is highly rel!##@$%%%&&^\ ^^^\\#**++~^^@@#$$%%\\\
Intel Inside? Don't Divide!
Definition of fraud: knowingly selling bad chips as good for five months.
I gather that FDIV bit off more of the mantissa than it could chew.
Now that the Pentium has been "fixed", does that mean it cannot "multiply" now?
SPCA: Society for Pentium Computation Anomalies
Geesh, with a simple div problem now, I hate to see what happens when Intel dump CISC for RISC and has to write an emulator for the x86!

November Election Results may be due to Intel Pentium Bug

 An anonymous source in the Democratic Party has revealed that the sweeping landslide victory of the Republicans in November may have been due to an obscure bug in the Intel Pentium computer chip.

Upgrading the nationwide vote counting system to the latest technology was one of Vice-President Al Gore's "Reinventing Government" initiatives. This change was meant to reduce costs and streamline operations, however, the computer glitch may have cost the Whitehouse dearly.

A spokesman for the Democratic Party denied the rumor that several thousand Power-PC's had been purchased as part of a vote recount effort.

When questioned about the news Senator Bob Dole ® commented that he believed the Intel Pentium chip was far better than anyone had thought. A short statement released by Newt Gingrich's office indicated that "the Democratic party has always sought to divide America" and that this discovery of an FDIV bug in the Intel Chip was "clear evidence of the moral decay of our society."

At a Motorola Plant in Austin, Texas Ross Perot told an angry crowd that according to his new calculations the deficit is actually 14 times larger than the government has been telling us. He praised his staff for staying up all night and performing the calculations by hand.

In late breaking news today legal briefs were filed in Chicago by former senator Dan Rostenkowski's attorneys which claimed that the irregularities at the House Bank and the House Post Office were actually due to Pentium chip calculation errors. Sources in Attorney General Janet Reno's office reveal a furious behind the scenes effort to reload the whitewater investigation spreadsheets in order to double check the results.

-1994
Reformatted by Ngai Chi-ho, Copyright © 1995.