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Intel Blog: Question: Does Software Actually Use New Instruction Sets?
Over time, Intel and other processor core designers add more and more instructions to the cores in our machines. A good question is how quickly and easily new instructions added to an Instruction-Set...
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Intel Blog Post: Using Wind River® Simics® to Inspire Teachers and...
A while ago, I visited my Intel colleagues in Costa Rica and ran a workshop for university teachers and researchers, showing how Simics could be used in academia. I worked with a very smart and...
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Non-Volatile Memory is Different from Non-Volatile Storage
The introduction of non-volatile memory that is accessed and addressed like traditional RAM instead of using a special interface has some rather interesting effects on software. It blurs the...
View ArticleTiming Measurements and Security
There have been quite a few security exploits and covert channels based on timing measurements in recent years. Some examples include Spectre and Meltdown, Etienne Martineau’s technique from Def Con...
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Intel Blog Post: Fault Injection in the Early Days of Simics
Injecting faults into systems and subjecting them to extreme situations at or beyond their nominal operating conditions is an important part of making sure they keep working even when things go bad....
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Undo Reverse Debugger “Pivots” to Record-Replay
I just found a story about Undo software that was rather interesting from a strategic perspective. “Patient capital from CIC gives ‘time travelling’ company Undo space to pivot“, from the...
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Borland Turbo Debugger – Reverse Execution in 1992
Thanks to a tip from “Derek” on a previous blog post about a replay debugger from 1995, I was made aware of the reverse execution ability that was available in the Borland Turbo Debugger version 3.0...
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Counting Powerpoint Files, Checking Attributes, etc., on Windows 10
I recently asked myself the question of just how many Powerpoint files I had on my work laptop and on my home machines. It turns out that it was pretty easy to figure that out using Windows...
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“Always Measure one Level Deeper” – Advice on Performance Measurements
Recently I stumbled on a nice piece called “Always Measure One Level Deeper” by John Ousterhout, from Communications of the ACM, July 2018....
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Keyboard Miscoloring – Just how does this Bug Happen?
I have a documented love for keyboards with RGB lighting. So I was rather annoyed when one of my Corsair K65 keyboards suddenly seemed to lose its entire red color component. The keyboard is supposed...
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Talking about Temporal Decoupling at DVCon Europe
This year’s Design and Verification Conference and Exhibition (DVCon Europe) takes place on October 24 and 25 (2018). DVCon Europe has turned into the best conference for virtual platform topics,...
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DVCon Europe 2018 / A Few Cool Papers
DVCon Europe took place in München, Bayern, Germany, on October 24 and 25, 2018. Here are some notes from the conference, including both general observations and some details on a few papers that were...
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Microsoft REPT: You CAN Reverse from a Core Dump!
There are some things in computing that seem “obviously” true and that “clearly” make it “impossible” to do some things. One example of this is the idea that you cannot go backwards in time from the...
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Intel Blog Post: Simics in the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge
The US Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) ran a “Cyber Grand Challenge” in 2016, where automated cyber-attack and cyber-defense systems were pitted against each other to drive progress in...
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DOOM Black Book – This is Brilliant!
Book cover I heard about the DOOM Game Engine Black Book by Fabien Sanglard on the Hanselminutes podcast episode 666, and immediately ordered the book. It was a riveting read – at least for someone...
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Intel Blog Post: Clear Linux for Simics Demo & Training
For Simics training and demo purposes, we often use Linux* running on the virtual platforms. In the early days of Simics and embedded Linux, we built our own minimal configurations by hand to run on...
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Using FPGAs to Simulate old Game Consoles
A while ago, Ars Technica reviewed the Mega Sg, a modern clone of the old Sega Genesis gaming system. I stumbled on this review recently and realized that this is a fascinating piece of hardware. The...
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Intel Blog: Simics 6 Device Register Coverage
I have a new blog post out on the Intel Developer Zone, about the Simics 6 device register coverage feature. I use device register coverage to look at how different operating systems use the same...
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Programming for Everyone, Everyone’s a Programmer?
Recently, I have read some articles and seen product announcements based on the idea that we need to make programming easier. Making it easier is supposed to make more people program, and the...
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More on Programming
My blog post from last week, “Programming for Everyone, Everyone’s a Programmer?,” gave rise to some good comments from friends and colleagues on the matter of programming. Some of the points are...
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