PIII Serial License

Intel created a feature for the PIII processor in the original SSE instruction set, but due to a political uproar as an infringement upon privacy it was removed in successive processors. In some respects it was a good thing to be able to track a particular computer, such as a violator of an online gaming network. An exact machine could be banned due to its fingerprint . However, others felt that people would lose their anonymity while on the Internet.

 mov eax,1    cpuid        test   edx,CPUIDFLG_PSN    jz   $xit            ; CPUID serial number is supported and enabled!        push eax    mov eax,3    cpuid    pop   eax            ; eax:edx:ecx = 96-bit serial number in capitalized hex digits.        ;               XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX $xit: