On x86 platforms with the intrinsic, rdrand is a deterministic bit generator
(AES-CTR) seeded from an entropic source. On x86 platforms with rdseed, it
is something closer to the upstream entropic source. (There is more nuance;
a block diagram is provided in [1].)
On devices with rdrand and without rdseed, there is no good intrinsic for
acecssing the good entropic soure directly. However, the DRBG is guaranteed
to reseed every 8 kB on these platforms. As a conservative option, on such
hardware we can just read an extra 7.99kB samples every time we want a
sample from an independent seed.
Because there is some performance penalty to this more conservative option,
a knob is provided to disable (and enable) the change. The change does not
affect platforms with RDSEED.