&quot;So, are Intel just being lax on verification or is their stuff just too complex + optimized to catch all the corner cases?&quot;<p>Lax! Of course it&#x27;s complicated but verification is about finding the corner cases. Intel is driving all these extensions to the ISA. They have a pretty captive CPU market so they are slack. Qualcomm was the same with Wifi SoCs when I was there. Freescale was better but that may be because of the particular projects.<p>&quot;I like knowing a batch of chips performed exactly according to spec when probed during operation. Funny I can&#x27;t remember what you HW people call that activity.&quot;<p>ATE (automatic test equipment)?<p>The thing is that Intel <i>does</i> have the toughest job. They are 28nm with a complicated design, lots of RAM, power is a big issue so clock gating probably everywhere etc. You can&#x27;t really compare that with a military or an academic chip. The design constraints are much tougher for Intel.<p>Still, Intel supposedly has all the geniuses and the money. They should have no excuses.<p>On the formal stuff, I have yet to be convinced. I never just trust the tools, remember?<p>My email is now in my user profile if you want to discuss further.