Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!milano!bigtex!qiclab!neighorn From: neighorn@qiclab.UUCP (Steve Neighorn) Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport Subject: Re: FP PROBLEM RESOLUTION Message-ID: <1574@qiclab.UUCP> Date: 15 Aug 88 01:51:04 GMT References: <2432@inco.UUCP> <543@olgb1.oliv.co.uk> <1542@qiclab.UUCP> <547@pcrat.UUCP> Reply-To: neighorn@qiclab.UUCP (Steve Neighorn) Organization: Qic Laboratories, Portland, Oregon. Lines: 48 In article <547@pcrat.UUCP> rick@pcrat.UUCP (Rick Richardson) writes: >In article <1542@qiclab.UUCP> neighorn@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"