AMD processor serial numbers

Hi,

Maybe it's undocumented, but bearing in mind every AMD processor now
has a unique serial number printed on it, does anyone know if it's
possible to read the serial number using software, sort of like the PSN
in Pentium IIIs?

Cheers,

James McLaughlin.

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Hi,

Maybe it's undocumented, but bearing in mind every AMD processor now
has a unique serial number printed on it, does anyone know if it's
possible to read the serial number using software, sort of like the PSN
in Pentium IIIs?

Cheers,

James McLaughlin.


Just plain old common sense should tell you that if Microsoft could read the
old P3s way back then, they can certainly do it better now. You either don't
know or you have forgotten that Microsoft talked AMD into using PSNs years
ago.
You will have no secrets once you change from XP to Vista which is really
Palladium finally being released.

wrote:
Hi,

Maybe it's undocumented, but bearing in mind every AMD processor now
has a unique serial number printed on it, does anyone know if it's
possible to read the serial number using software, sort of like the PSN
in Pentium IIIs?

Cheers,

James McLaughlin.


There is some info here. If you check the reference section, and download
25481.pdf versus Intel's 24161831.pdf, the EDX bit 18 in the AMD
document is marked as "reserved", whereas for Intel, that bit field
is used to indicate whether the Pentium3 PSN serial number feature
is enabled or not. I expect this is what most software would be
checking for. The "reserved" for AMD suggests they do not use
the same mechanism, so the bit field should not even be checked
by any software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPUID

You can never be sure about the contents of silicon, and undocumented
features. You can check the "Security Features" section of the
Everest output, and see what it claims for PSN for your processor.
But this doesn't guarantee that there isn't *some* mechanism available
and not documented. Checking in Google, you can certainly see that
small software developers are interested in accessing the PSN, if it
was available.

(A sample Everest report - see security features section)
http://techgage.com/reviews/lavalys/report.html

(Everest free download)
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181

Paul