HACKER Q&A
📣 JPLeRouzic

Changing the Behavior of a Commercial CPU


Two decades ago it was possible for a person to tweak the microcode of Intel processors [0]

I wonder if this is still possible, or even better if it is possible to write our own microde to completely change the behavior of a CPU?

Thanks!

[0] https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=1062705


  👤 zzo38computer Accepted Answer ✓
I have thought of a idea about that, where the microcode memory has ROM and RAM, and uses a long VLIW transport-triggered (although the address bus and data bus are also registers) self-modifying microcode with Muxcomp and each instruction also is a jump. There is no cache, but you can store stuff in the microcode RAM for temporary use, and there is also no out of order execution or all of that other stuff either. I don't know if there is any such thing, although apparently VAX does at least a few of these things (but not all of them).