From: mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 94 17:39:25 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Pentium bug and CRYPTO
In-Reply-To: <2ED0DE87@microcosm.SanDiegoCA.NCR.COM>
Message-ID: <199411220139.RAA05434@netcom19.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


"Claborne, Chris" <claborne@microcosm.sandiegoca.NCR.COM> writes:

 > Will the following error (Re Pentium Floating Point Bug
 > Date: 15 Nov 1994) cause problems with PGP key generation or
 > any other normal operations with PGP or other crypto.  I'm
 > not a math mathmatics nerd but I know we generally deal with
 > big numbers.

No problems for released versions of PGP, which use only the 8086
instruction set and require neither a floating point coprocessor
nor emulation.

Most other crypto should be fine as well.  Crypto is pretty much
an integer exercise.

People have been known to use floating point to do multiprecision
integer arithmetic on Sparcs and large engineering mainframes
which lack a complete integer instruction set, but I've never
heard of anyone trying such things on an Intel processor.

-- 
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd@netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $