content: How would trust be established? The same way quality control in fabrication works, and the same way reverse engineering works: by analyzing it, by taking it apart, scoping it, dumping the on-board software, and figuring out how it all works. Your point remains, though: "There is no feasible way for normal people to trust CPUs". I don't have a $250k microscope, nor the other equipment required, nor the dozens of CE's and CS's to reverse a modern CPU. Nor do I trust an online collective of "independent CPU auditors" when I know that intelligence agencies from all over the world have direct mandates to install backdoors in every part of the computer that they can, and infiltrate social networks, media, and Open Source efforts to corrupt them towards their goals.