Zero Did Not Attend
Eleven hours, one processor, every sixteen-bit number called by name. All but one of them answered.
Behind the curtain+
Micro scope, one story: a Zen 2 chip asked for sixteen-bit random numbers for eleven hours produced every value except zero, while an Intel part produced zeros without incident.
The material is already a headcount with exactly one absentee, so the form is the finding; a clerk states the absence, states the one thing the absence cannot prove, and closes the file without editorializing.
Attendance. Sixteen-bit integers. Eleven hours, one Zen 2 core.
Enrolled: 65,536. Answered: 65,535.
Every value was called. Every value answered at roughly its fair rate, all night, on schedule, without complaint.
Zero did not attend.
No excuse was submitted. The same roll called on an Intel part produces zero without incident, so the absence is local to this room.
A note from the prior census: this part once returned nothing but ones, and was corrected. Something was corrected.
The clerk wishes to record the limit of the finding. A machine that has not said a number has not been shown to be incapable of saying it. It has only been quiet so far. Clearing the sixty-four-bit register at this rate would take seven hundred thousand cores and a couple of years, and at the end of the couple of years the register would not be cleared. It would be quiet longer.
The census remains open.
Zero is entered as not yet seen.