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Associated Press
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Intel Corp., on the eve of launching its Pentium II microprocessor, said Tuesday it is investigating a reported math flaw in the chip.
The company, the world's largest maker of computer chips, said it expected to figure out the problem by the end of the week and promised to make that information public. Intel also said that if an error does exist it will come up with a solution as soon as possible.
But the bug, reported Monday on the Web site of Intel critic Robert Collins, will not delay the company's planned rollout of the chip in New York today. The microprocessor initially will appear in powerful personal computers for businesses.
The reported problem was in some ways reminiscent of the 1994 discovery of a bug in Intel's Pentium processor, which caused mistakes in some obscure division calculations.
Although that flaw was considered minor, Intel was widely criticized for not immediately publicizing the problem and depicting the bug as unlikely to affect the average user.
But the company, responding to a consumer outcry, changed its procedures. It now routinely discloses chip errors to the public as well as to computer and software companies.
"We don't make statements any longer about whether an error is important or not. What we do is provide that information to interested audiences and let them decide," Intel spokesman Howard High said.
Industry analysts said the apparent flaw in the Pentium II seems to be less serious than the Pentium bug. Rather than making occasional mistakes in calculating data, the chip reportedly in rare instances fails to properly tell the rest of the computer how it is handling some types of data.
Drew Peck, an analyst with Cowen & Co. in Boston, said such a bug still could result in miscalculations. But he also said that the same error also reportedly occurs in the earlier Pentium Pro chip but that no problems have been reported in the 18 months that it's been on the market.
Collins, a software engineer in San Jose, has published his site on the Internet's World Wide Web since mid-1995. The site, "Intel Secrets: What Intel Doesn't Want You To Know," offers information on errors in Intel's chips.
Collins said a user alerted him to a problem in the way the Pentium Pro and Pentium II handled some floating point calculations. Collins ran his own tests and also found the bug.
He said he didn't get word of the problem until mid-April.
"Look at today's date and draw your own conclusions," he said. "I wasn't sitting on this for two months and waiting for the right moment and I didn't rush this out either," he said.
Collins said he has asked experts to run their own checks and tell him their findings.
Robert Chaplinski, an analyst with Hambrecht & Quist in San Francisco, said it was premature to determine the seriousness of the reported flaw. He and Peck said Intel's response is the most important thing -- and that the company won't wait to act correctly.
"I think Intel's matured enormously from the earlier Pentium experience," Chaplinski said. "They have become sensitive to the consumer, and I think they'll do whatever it takes to clearly fix the problem."
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