AMD Chip's Random Number Generator Reportedly Cannot Produce a Zero; Engineers Call It "Glass-Half-Full Architecture"
The processor can still generate every other number, which the company notes is most of them.
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — A developer testing an assembly-language charting program has reported that the hardware random number generator on some AMD processors appears to be incapable of producing the number zero, a finding a person familiar with the company's chip design described as "a feature of the culture."
"We are a company of builders," said the person, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak for the random number generator. "Nobody here likes to show up to a meeting with nothing."
The developer, who posted a small test application to an assembly programming forum, reported watching his chart for hours on an AMD machine without the first bar ever changing color, while the same program on an Intel processor produced zeros regularly. More than 60 forum members have since run the test, and a statistician who reviewed their results, Oluwaseun Harrow-Bekker, said the odds of the pattern occurring by chance were "roughly zero, which I realize is ironic."
Cryptographers said the flaw, if confirmed, would be minor for most uses, since removing one value from billions of possibilities barely changes anything. "It is technically a slightly less random number," said Harrow-Bekker. "It is a random number with a positive attitude."
The finding has prompted some developers to audit other parts of their systems. One engineer reported that the same machine's CI dashboard had not shown zero failing tests in 14 months, though she acknowledged this was probably unrelated.
A separate forum user reported that, on further testing, his AMD processor also appeared unable to produce the number 13, and asked whether it was a hotel.
At press time, the random number generator had been asked to comment and had produced 4,194,301.