Re:1/0 = 0
by klodolph on Friday August 10, 2018 @05:21PM
(#17736841)
> This is calling for an Ariane 5-type crash because an underflow error caused a value to suddenly fall from 10e6 to 0.
That’s the opposite of what happened. A value overflowed, which triggered an exception, which caused a module to emit diagnostic information, which was misinterpreted by other systems as flight data. Interestingly, the value which overflowed was part of a system which was only used until LT+7, which had aleady passed…
In short, if the overflow had simply saturated or wrapped around to 0 or given some other garbage result, the Ariane would have not crashed.
That’s the opposite of what happened. A value overflowed, which triggered an exception, which caused a module to emit diagnostic information, which was misinterpreted by other systems as flight data. Interestingly, the value which overflowed was part of a system which was only used until LT+7, which had aleady passed…
In short, if the overflow had simply saturated or wrapped around to 0 or given some other garbage result, the Ariane would have not crashed.