Re: How to develop a random number generation device

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:m5nte3ps9ff0papglqq4uiv86helfp2u23@xxxxxxxxxx
But my PC doesn't
have hardware problems, it has software problems.

Sure it does (have hardware problems), Intel was just smart enough to allow
patching of the microcode so that buggy features are worked around or simply
not used. When the buggy simply can't be fixed, it's the compiler writers who
get burdened with having to keep up which bugs are still present and insuring
that code isn't generated that would expose them (very few people program x86
CPUs in assembly anymore!). Intel is also smart enough to do a lot of testing
any time a new CPU comes out -- I'm sure there are still plenty of people
there who remember the nasty FDIV bug, as well as the lesser-known problem
with the first 1GHz CPUs that would randomly fail to compile the Linux kernel

I've been surprised at just how buggy a lot of OC software is if you actually
start pushing it to its limits -- it's clear that much software today only
gets very rudimentary testing. (And as I've stated before, I personally know
"programmers" who believe they can claim on a progress report that they
"finished such and such software" as soon as it *compiles*. :-( )


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