MICROCHIP maker Intel Corp continues to defend its position with its flawed Pentium microprocessor in the face of heightening controversy over the issue. 'Based upon the work of our scientists analysing real world applications, and the experience of millions of Pentium processor-based systems, we have no evidence of increased probability of encountering the flaw,' said Intel president and chief executive Andrew Grove in a statement issued last week.
'You can always contrive situations that force this error. In other words, if you know where a meteor will land will land, you can go there and get hit.' Mr Grove's comments came in response to an announcement by industry powerhouse IBM Corp that it would stop shipping systems based on the faulty Pentium processors, claiming the chip's problems were far worse than Intel had publicly stated.
The IBM announcement immediately polarised the industry with no other major manufacturers following the company's lead so far.
If anything, the IBM announcement prompted a group of other PC vendors to publicly come out in support of Intel, calling the IBM move unwarranted and unnecessary.
Adding fuel to the debate, respected industry trade magazines PC Week and PC Magazine have claimed the Pentium problems were far worse than Intel was acknowledging, but stopped short of endorsing the IBM claims.
Intel, however, spent last week continuing to play down the impact of the Pentium flaw, standing by its original claim that the frequency of encountering the 'reduced precision' in its floating point divide operations was once in every nine billion random divide operations.
The snafu is likely to severely strain an already unusual relationship between IBM and Intel. For Intel, IBM is at once a major customer and partner as a major maker of Intel-based PCs. On the one hand, it is a serious competitor as co-designer of the competitive PowerPC processor.