The FDIV bug is not theoretical. It existed and no one died from it. People love to come up with theoretically how the bug can cause terrible things to happen, but in practice it didn't. The next run of the processor had the fix and the world moved on.
1. Intel wasn’t very popular for scientific computing in 1994
2. No one was stupid enough to make life critical calculations on Intel after it was discovered and widely publicized
You, on the other hand, are suggesting it was no big deal and acting like people doing important work should have just ignored the bug. The reason bugs like this didn’t kill people in a large disaster is that folks with your disposition weren’t in charge of making decisions that would have led to that.
They did a recall that cost Intel a billion dollars adjusted for the present. It wasn’t just ignored.
>and acting like people doing important work should have just ignored the bug.
No, I am acting like the average consumer could have ignored the bug. There wasn't a need to do a mass recall of every chip as the chip would still be fine for most users. Yes, there was a recall for people who needed it to work correctly, but in practice not everyone needs it.
