pentium bug/microprocessor design

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

I've been having a brief discussion with someone on this list about
the pentium flaws. for those of you who don't know,
there's actually a minor crisis brewing in
chip design. Intel probably tests their chips 
more rigorously than just about anybody. 

the crisis is
that because of the enormous increasing complexity of
individual chips, it's becoming statistically impossible
to completely test them. that is, as much as people want
to curse Intel for their bugs, it's actually the case
that they've been ahead of the curve as much as possible
in testing. 

there are new schemes in the
works by which Intel etc. are trying to deal with this,
including a remarkable scheme in which new microcode
can be downloaded to the chip. it also involves encryption
in which one needs to know the encryption mechanism for
the chip to accept the new instructions. apparently it's
done in such a way that no one except those who know the
encryption can successfully alter the chip.

but this does raise a lot of cypherpunk issues such as
about reverse engineering etc.