| Sorry about that. FOOF did cause some people headaches. I should have more specifically said, "has there been a problem with RDRAND hardware in any Intel CPU?" FOOF wasn't a "real" problem for an average user, it had some workarounds. It wasn't even triggered unless you tried to execute an invalid instruction. Much much much worse was the Intel FDIV bug. That one caused Intel to recall processors and cost them $475 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug Lots of jokes resulted. E.g.: We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated. As for RDRAND, Intel put a lot of thought into it. It wasn't just a hack. Here's a high level presentation. (A friend of mine at Intel thought highly of Dr. George Cox, who was a long time Intel employee). https://old.hotchips.org/wp-content/uploads/hc_archives/hc23... Here's a little more detail: https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/behind-intels-n... |