Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!amdahl!nsc!voder!lynx!m5
From: m5@lynx.UUCP (Mike McNally)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.intel
Subject: 80386 bugs
Summary: Do various 386 bugs noticeably affect performance?
Message-ID: <3824@lynx.UUCP>
Date: 27 May 88 20:19:23 GMT
Reply-To: m5@lynx.UUCP (Mike McNally)
Distribution: na
Organization: Lynx Real-Time Systems Inc, Campbell CA
Lines: 11

Has anyone or anything (meaning a benchmark of some kind) noticed any
performance problems with 80386/387 bugs?  I guess it's also
appropriate to ask if the bugs still exist.  Two I've heard about
involve bad interactions between paging and the 387, like when ESC
instructions start in a resident page but end in a paged-out page, and
also some kind of deal with the instruction prefetch unit screwing up
addresses from the 387.  I assume that some sort of nasty workarounds
have to be done for these bugs;  are hardware solutions present in
typical 386 PC's?  Can the bugs be dealt with in software?  If so, how
does that affect floating point (and other kinds of) performance?

Just curious.