Intel Pentium Flaw

The Intel Pentium FDIV Bug In 1994, Intel found themselves in a crisis which caused the company nearly $500 million in financial damages. In the release of the Intel’s Pentium chip, in 1994, there was a flaw that caused incorrect double-precision arithmetic calculation. Reportedly, in June 1994, Intel testers discovered the division error in the Pentium chip (1). Intel management determined this particular error would not be noticed by average consumer users. Moreover, decides the issue is not significant enough to warrant neither fix nor do they inform anyone outside of the company yet still releases the chip into production. (1) This was definitely the beginning of their woes. This action or non-action violates stipulations three IEEE code of ethics “to be honest and realistic in stating claims or estimates based on available data.” (2) It also violates code nine “to avoid injuring others, their property, reputation, or employment by false malicious action.” (2) The processor produced mathematical errors which could have caused harmed to others in the banking, science, mathematics

Nicely contacted Intel but received no response, so he posts the issue on the internet. After it issue becomes publicly known, Intel implements a return policy which states, customers could receive a replacement if they could prove the need of the unflawed version. They later revamped this policy and offered a replacement for any customer who requested. This entire situation could have been prevented if Intel would have followed bylaw ten, which states any member of a corporation should try “to assist colleagues and co-workers in their professional development and to support them in this code of ethics”. When management was informed by testers there was an error in chip, they should have stopped the release of the processor until the error was