Re:Two interesting XOR circuits inside the Intel 386 processor
by kens on Saturday December 16, 2023 @07:28PM
(#38669200)
It sounds like you did some very interesting experimentation with the prefetch queue. Realistically, I'm unlikely to investigate the 386 prefetch queue to that level of detail, but if I do, your tests would be useful.
The prefetch queue could be (ab)used in some very interesting and sometimes baffling ways. One of the creations causes a divide by zero if you try to debug it, even if viewing the code doesn't look like it should.
Also, I did some experimenting with shrinking code by replacing INT3h with INT21h (one byte, versus two), which similarly lent itself to anti-debugger effects.