FP PROBLEM RESOLUTION

[Steve Neighorn]

In article <547 at pcrat.UUCP> rick at pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson) writes:
>In article <1542 at qiclab.UUCP> neighorn at qiclab.UUCP (Steve Neighorn) writes:
>>
>>If you don't have a 80387, or have a D step 80386, the patch doesn't
>>need to be applied.
>
>So, Steve, what is the procedure for us to trade in our bogus 80386's for
>a D step 386?  Sure, maybe this one can be fixed in software, if we
>upgrade (at our cost!).  And what kind of performance hit do we take.
>
>This is Intel's botch.  Intel should fix it.

I will repeat what I said before : Release 3.1 of V/386 contains erratum
21 "Supression". I don't have any specific details on performance hits,
if any, you might experience with the patch installed. On the machines I
have used with the patch applied, I have not noticed any performance loss
that can be directly attributable to the fix, but that is of course a
subjective evaluation based only on what I am doing with the machines.

Release 3.1 contains a full-house of performance improvements, including
better system tuning, faster curses, client caching for RFS, an optional
2k block file system conversion, fancier sar, and a better C compiler. I
have seen estimates of 30-50% application performance improvement via all
the new stuff 3.1 offers. It really is faster, though I haven't
experienced the 30-50% speedup myself. I am probably not using the
right applications :-).

As for your comments on the chip problems : I don't like it any better
than you. I have two '386 machines of my own that must deal with this
problem daily. I was lucky enough to avoid the multiply bug, but it was
a simple case of timing, not anything else.

I hear comments about the 386's problems all the time. I don't have nor will
I make up any excuses. I am not a policy maker, I am an engineer. I have
worked at Intel for 6 weeks now, SO DON'T FLAME ME! And making comments
about .signature files? Come now!

Release 3.1 seems to offer a viable path for pre-D-stop 80386 installations.
It fixes the problem and adds a lot of nice features and improvements to 
boot. Don't ask me about upgrades either - ask Bell, Interactive, uport, or
whomever you got your Unix from.

I wish you luck, as I wish all of use using V/386 luck in getting all this
resolved.
-- 
Steven C. Neighorn            !tektronix!{psu-cs,reed,ogcvax}!qiclab!neighorn
Intel Corporation            "Where we BUILD the Star Fighters that defend the
Development Tools Operation      frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan Armada"