Clik here to view.
Why DO Computers Fail?
I just found and read an old text in the computer systems field, “Why Do Computers Fail and What Can Be Done About It?” , written by Jim Gray at Tandem Computers in 1985. It is a really nice overview...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fortress Rochester
In a dusty bookshelf at work I found an ancient tome of wisdom, long abandoned by its previous owner. I was pointed to it by a fellow explorer of the dark arts of computer system design as something...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Replay Debugger from 1995!
A comment on my old blog post about the history of reverse execution gave me a pointer to a fairly early example of replay debugging. The comment pointed at a 2002 blog post which in turn pointed at a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Intel Blog: How 3dfx was Built on a Simulator
In the early 1990s, “PC graphics” was almost an oxymoron. If you wanted to do real graphics, you bought a “real machine”, most likely a Silicon Graphics workstation. At the PC price-point, fast...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Simulation and the Apollo Guidance Computer
Today, when developing embedded control systems, it is standard practice to test control algorithms against some kind of “world model”, “plant model” or “environment simulator”. Using a simulated...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Simulation in the IBM ACS Project – Current Practices in 1966
I once wrote a blog post about the use of computer architecture pipeline simulation in the IBM ”Stretch” project, which seems to be the first use of computer architecture simulation to design a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A new Reverse Debugger – Microsoft WinDbg
A blog post from Undo Software informed me that Microsoft has rather quietly released a reverse debugger tool for Windows programs – WinDbg with Time Travel Debug. It is available in the latest preview...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Intel Blog Post: Running Large Workloads on Simics – in 1998 and 2018
I have just released a new blog post on my Intel Developer Zone blog, about how Simics runs large huge workloads. I look back at the kinds of workloads that ran on Simics back in 1998 when the product...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Intel Blog Post: Simulation a Thousand Target Machines – in 2004 and 2018
Back in 2004, the startup Virtutech built a crazy demo for the 2004 Embedded Systems Conference (ESC). Back then, ESC was the place to be, and Virtutech was there with a battery of demos to blast the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Intel Blog Post: Fault Injection in the Early Days of Simics
Injecting faults into systems and subjecting them to extreme situations at or beyond their nominal operating conditions is an important part of making sure they keep working even when things go bad....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Intel Blog Post: The Simics Fulprompt, Fulöl, and Fuldans
I have a new blog post up at the Intel Developer Zone, this time about the Simics “fulprompt”. Every software team has its legends about spectacular mistakes, crazy users, and customer calls with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Intel Blog Post: Interview with Bengt Werner on the Early Days of Simics
Bengt Werner was one of the first people to work on the simulator that would become Simics, way back in 1992. On my Intel Blog, I published an interview with Bengt a while back where we discuss the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Borland Turbo Debugger – Reverse Execution in 1992
Thanks to a tip from “Derek” on a previous blog post about a replay debugger from 1995, I was made aware of the reverse execution ability that was available in the Borland Turbo Debugger version 3.0...
View ArticleClik here to view.
DOOM Black Book – This is Brilliant!
Book cover I heard about the DOOM Game Engine Black Book by Fabien Sanglard on the Hanselminutes podcast episode 666, and immediately ordered the book. It was a riveting read – at least for someone...
View ArticleThe First Swedish Programmer (1790s)?
The history show (and podcast) of Sverige Radio, Vetenskapsradion Historia, is one of the shows that I subscribe to and listen to regularly. In their look back at 2020, they reminded me of an episode...
View ArticleProfessor Reinhard Wilhelm on the History of WCET Analysis
Back when I was a PhD student working on worst-case execution-time (WCET) analysis, one of the leading groups researching the topic was the “Saarbrücken gang” led by Professor Reinhard Wilhelm. Last...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Timesharing System Design Concepts (1970)
When I recently turned 50, a friend of mine gave me a book that was about as old as me – Timesharing System Design Concepts, by Richard W Watson. The copyright date is 1970, but the publishing date...
View ArticleThank You, Sir Clive Sinclair
A few days ago, Sir Clive Sinclair died. I owe him, or rather his most successful product, my career as a computer scientist. I bought myself a ZX Spectrum in my early teens, taught myself how to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Code to the Spec(trum) or the Implementation
When writing software that uses any kind of API or hardware functionality, sooner or later there will be questions about what a particular API call or hardware operation is supposed to do. In...
View ArticleUseful Instruction Set Computing
I tend to get into discussions about computer processor instruction-set architecture (ISA) design. ISA design is far from my day job, but it is an interesting topic where everyone working with...
View Article