Can any part of Intel's (RdRand) random number generator be visually inspected?
Ivy Bridge is in the 22nm node. That is an order of magnitude smaller than the visible light band, therefore impossible to view transistor level detail with an optical microscope. If someone wanted to throw money at it, the surface could be imaged by SEM or AFM. Not an expert, but SEM is destructive, and my gut tells me AFM would give better results anyway. AFM is a slow process, aka it would take forever to image the entire die with enough resolution to see the individual transistors. Even then, imaging the surface is a waste of time. I don't even want to speculate the number of layers in that die.