@SpriggsySpriggs Quote from
@SpriggsySpriggs (reply 113)
What is the reason for needing such a large number right now?
I omitted mentioning the following in my reply (118) ...
At about the same time of the "Pentium Bug", there was an interesting article. The article, as far as I could tell, did not mention specific names, companies, products and so - although "sketchy" here, the article relates to an investigation (in the USA) about that a certain (fairly complex) IC package (i.e. the silicon chip inside) was found in an "un-authorized" product on the commercial market. So apparently the silicon die chip was illegally copied and sold in a competitor's product. (Although the question maybe "Was this intelectural theft?" - or was this "A shenanigan (or something)" - the development that follows was that (at the time) an un-named US government agency was investigating the incident.)
Apparently, it turned out that the original manufacturer of the chip "on purpose" arranged by design a "deliberate error in the silicon die", an error (or design fault) so by its nature not to be noticed etc. and in the mainstream usage would not have typically any bearing on any outcomes. The shear probability of a competitor coming up with such a "extremely remote" design fault of this kind, and going further, that the whole silicon die itself was exactly identical including the physical location of the design fault on the silicon die itself - would suggest to readers of the article that corporate theft was involved. Further, due to lack of disclosure of specific names etc. and lack of follow-up press releases - the article left open to the readers that "Was there a National Security Risk (for USA) because of "corporate spying (or something)?". To sum this story up - I think the whole event was an investigative "STING" (I think the word is).
NOW, more recently (a few years ago, and I think maybe still continuing today) is the "Talent 1000" program - being run by the Chinese Government. Here the Chinese Government was actively encouraging its manufacturing infrastructure to improve its products to be competitive with the rest of the world. Coincidently, there have been government investigations of "connections of various specialists" with the "Talent 1000" program - and especially of same (outside of China) not declaring such interests....(and I leave it to your imagination of all sorts of things that can be resulting because of this).
As far as this reply goes ...
The Pentium Bug may not have been a "design mistake" (rather a test of security and integrity processes). As to the many thousands of computers which have had the particular "batch" of Pentium processors installed (apparently only a particular model/product number of the Pentium chip is affected) - and of which INTEL probably did not sell to computer makers - what happens to the owners of these affected computers today (and consider, following up on what was said above, on further INTEL products of the current "x86...x64" series)? At the time of the Pentium Bug, apparently software patches "popped up" but I seem to find same hard to find. For my INTEL processor I did run an INTEL program which did output a lot of information on my particular chip (like how much first, second and third level memory was present, etc.).
As far as QB64 goes, for the many potential "compromised" computers out there - maybe
@SpriggsySpriggs (or someone) can come up with firstly a diagnostic program (Windows API or something) to exactly classify the processor installed. Secondly, based on this classification (and reference to any submitted list of "suspect processors") perform very specific program result tests (say along the line of advertised Pentium Bug tests). Finally to confirm if the bugs are present - and for say divides may need calculations beyond 64/80 bit using completely independent means (not intel divide/multiply operations).
Of course all of the above is an "isolated case" (Pentium Bug) and has not touched on a potentially more serious aspect of precision (which may be a matter of opinion depending on users expectations).