I've long wanted to have a way to see what actually happens inside a CPU when a set of instructions are executed. I'm pretty excited after skimming this paper as it looks like they developed a technique to automatically determine how the x86-64 instructions actually work by observing real world CPU behavior.
I've long wanted to have a way to see what actually happens inside a CPU when a set of instructions are executed. I'm pretty excited after skimming this paper as it looks like they developed a technique to automatically determine how the x86-64 instructions actually work by observing real world CPU behavior.
This is determining the directly observable behavior rather than anything about microarchitectural specifics.
And still quite a useful tool, particularly when exploring undocumented instructions.
blinkenlights might be up your alley, if you haven't seen it before.
https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/