Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!cam-cl!scc From: scc@cl.cam.ac.uk (Stephen Crawley) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Claimed bug in 80286 Message-ID: <852@scaup.cl.cam.ac.uk> Date: 2 Aug 89 02:05:58 GMT References: <1717@brwa.inmos.co.uk> <15963@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> Sender: news@cl.cam.ac.uk Organization: U of Cambridge Comp Lab, UK Lines: 44 "Computing", another UK trade rag, treats this somewhat more rationally. From the issue of 27 July '89, page >>6<<: "Intel chip bug delays software plan". Software developers have discovered a bug in an early version of the Intel 286 chip which has caused several weeks of delay on a software development project. Ada specialist Alsys said it discovered the bug -- details of which have not been published -- during work on development of a specialist application for one of its customers. The bug means that problems arise when two interrupts -- signals sent from the hardware to the operating system -- occur simultaneously, [[Looks like the bug that Dick Dunn described ...]] `Our French colleagues already knew about it but we discovered it in the UK' said Alsys marketting manager Martyn Jordan. `We consider it a serious issue -- everyone takes hardware for granted when software doesn't work' he added. Although Jordan added said the chances of two interrupts happening simultaneously are low, it means his company has had to release extra code to deal with the problem. 'It would have been nice if we had known about the problem first' said Jordan. Ian Wilson, product marketting manager at Intel said Alsys was using a non-Intel emulator. `Alsys is running a 286 which is over 4 years old. Errors were cured years ago.' (Typo's in the above are mine) This whole thing sound to me like Alsys' marketting making excuses for a delayed project. As to Leon Clifford (the Electronics Weekly journalist)'s mumblings about airplanes falling out of the sky: if recent articles in comp.risks are to be believed, safety-critical realtime software don't use interrupts anyhow; everything is done with polling. Isn't technology wonderful! Me? Cynical? Never!! -- Steve