Everything you want to know about x86 microcode, but might have been afraid to ask

https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9058-everything_you_want_to_know_about_x86_microcode_but_might_have_been_afraid_to_ask#t=2250

This is a quite interesting presentation on Intel CPU secrets:

 Microcode is an abstraction layer on top of the physical components of a CPU and present in most general-purpose CPUs today. While it is well-known that CPUs feature a microcode update mechanism, very little is known about its inner workings given that microcode and the update mechanism itself are proprietary and have not been throughly analyzed yet. We close this gap by both analyzing microcode and writing our own programs for it. 

5 Comments

  1. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Intel’s First x86 CPU Had Secret Instructions Meant to Catch IP Thievery
    By Francisco Pires published 9 days ago
    Expensive transistors meant some security venues were left almost unguarded.
    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intels-first-x86-cpu-had-secret-instructions-meant-to-catch-ip-thievery

    Reply
  2. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Tracing the roots of the 8086 instruction set to the Datapoint 2200 minicomputer
    https://www.righto.com/2023/08/datapoint-to-8086.html

    Reply

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