'Super-secret' debugger discovered in AMD CPUs

[Klo]

From The Register, so not sure how reliable. However if its true it will be interesting to see what people can do with it!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/15/amd_secret_debugger/

A hardware hacker has discovered a secret debugging feature hidden in all AMD chips made in the past decade.

The password-protected debugger came as a shock to reverse-engineers who have hungered for an on-chip mechanism for performing conditional and direct-hardware breakpoint operations

Sorry if this is old, I couldn't see anything when I glanced at the front page.

 

[mrtckane]

if intel find anything of theirs inside this "secret menu", there's one solid thing that can be done with it.

and that involves lawyers.

 

[pingwing]

Thats pretty cool! No idea what to do with it though... (hope there isnt anything intel in there though, would kill the industry)

 

[darkwildchild79]

okay what is that debugger mode ment to do???

 

[AS_Platinum]

okay what is that debugger mode ment to do???

One could only assume that it is a mode to "debug" stuff, Just off the top of my head.

 

[ahenners]

One could only assume that it is a mode to "debug" stuff, Just off the top of my head.

That would be logical

 

[ntg]

Surely if this thing was in existence during the past "decade" it would have been whistleblowed a long time ago? Apparently it must not be anything of significant use - that would be my guess.

 

[Hagar]

For internal use (AMD), I am sure all processors have such, for testing and improvements. The important bit would be what you connected to it with to perform the what if and breakpoint operations on the internal code. Also what you could do with such information.

 

[darkwildchild79]

i am still trying to see the point of this thread, if you have access to debugging information on the chip what is the benefits??