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From: kenobi%lightsabre@Sun.COM (Rick Kwan)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Compaq find problem with chip
Message-ID: <127471@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 6 Nov 89 21:34:27 GMT
References: <2719@ganymede.inmos.co.uk> <2725@ganymede.inmos.co.uk> <2800@ganymede.inmos.co.uk>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: kenobi@sun.UUCP (Rick Kwan)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 23

In article <2800@ganymede.inmos.co.uk> conor@inmos.co.uk (Conor O'Neill) writes:
>Reproduced from Electronics Weekly, Wed, November 1, 1989, front page:
>(without permission)
>
>Two design faults have been discovered in Intel's million transistor 80486
>microprocessor chip which was first unveiled last April and has been in
>production since August.
>
>Both faults are in the chip's floating point unit: one affects its ability
>to correctly calculate trigonometrical functions such as tangents, cosines

Anyone know:
    1.	how long (man-years and/or calendar years) it took to write
	the test vectors to exercise the 486, and roughly how many
	vectors are involved?  (I heard that the 386 took 3 years.)
    2.	what kind of system was used for testing (Trillium, Sentry,
	or what)?

I assume this is an absolutely full-custom chip.  Yes?

	Rick Kwan
	Sun Microsystems - Intercontinental Operations
	kenobi@sun.UUCP or kenobi%lightsabre@sun.COM