New Job, New Simulator

As already leaked by LinkedIn, I recently started a new job at ASTC, as Global Technical Marketing Manager for the VLAB virtual platform product. This is my first major change of job I since I joined Virtutech to work on the Simics simulator back in 2002. It is both a big change and a small change – staying in the world of virtual platforms, but working with a new product that is quite different from Simics. In fact, more things are different and new and fresh than the same…

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(Local) AI, Please Reason about Code

“Reasoning” models have become popular as a way to expand the capabilities of large language models (LLMs). Such models take more time “considering” a prompt and iterating it through the model several times, with the goal of mimicking how a human might go about solving a problem by breaking it down into steps. I tried the reasoning QwQ model on the coding problems from my previous blog posts (1,2). Quite funny and elucidating; I will quote the replies in full as they are worth reading.

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(Local) AI, Please Write some Code

My previous blog post in this series tested the ability of a range of large language models to analyze a piece of C code and determine what a mystery function did. That was interesting and entertaining, but possibly not a particularly “fair” test of the models’ capabilities. Most of time, I think people use “AI” to help write code, not to understand some tricky piece of algorithmic code. Thus, I turn the problem around and ask the models to write code for the algorithm I previously asked them to analyze.

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(Local) AI, Please Explain This Code

Continuing my exploration of what a local AI model can do, I decided to test them on the task of code analysis. It would be so nice to have an AI model that is tuned and trained on a particular tool or programming system, and that can be distributed for users to run on their own on their local machine, server, or cloud VM. Avoiding the need to run and charge for a custom cloud service and ensuring confidentiality and availability.

Updated 2024-12-12 with Llama-3.3-70B

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More Exploration of (Local) AI Models

In my previous blog post about the Intel AI Playground, I tested it by asking it to draw cars. In this post, I share some more exploration of these local AI models and their limitations. Turns out that cars are easy, other things not so much…

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Hi Local AI, Draw Me …

I recently built a new desktop computer, featuring an Intel ARC 770 graphics card (just to be different). The card is supported by the Intel AI Playground, which is a software package that makes it dead easy to run AI/large language models (LLM) locally on my GPU. I was curious as to just what this could do, as compared to the big AI models that run on cloud servers.

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Reversing out of Reverse

The Intel Simics simulator version 7 removed a long-standing feature from the simulator framework. Reverse execution is no longer available. In its place, in-memory snapshots were introduced, which arguably offer most of the benefits at a lower implementation cost. What happened? I’ve been asked about the reasoning behind the chance on several occasions since I left Intel. I’d like to share my perspective on the decision, as it highlights the challenges of turning an idea into a robust, shippable feature.

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“Processor Performance Insights and Optimization” – Computer and System Architecture Unraveled Event Four

Finally, the fourth CaSA, Computer and System Architecture Unraveled, meetup happened on November 6. It took far too long to get it organized, but we finally did it. The theme was about processor performance analysis and efficient processor implementation, offering two talks from very different perspectives. The location was almost the same as before, on the 19th floor of the Kista Science Tower building. Once more thanks to the sponsorship from Vasakronan and Kista Science City.

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DVCon Europe Report on Semiwiki

I posted my first post on Semiwiki! It is a short summary of what we learned at DVCon Europe 2024. Semiwiki is a blog and wiki for the “semiconductor” industry – i.e., it covers topics like EDA tools, semiconductor manufacturing and fabs, hardware design, software design, testing, validation, etc.

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Vilnius – History, Russia, Ukraine

We spent a few days in Vilnius at the end of October. Rather late in the tourist season, but the city was still open for business. It was a very good experience. Vilnius is one of the friendliest and cleanest places I have visited. Definitely on the “recommended” list. Here are some assorted notes from what we saw.

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More Ghostwrite Bugginess with RISCVuzz

In my previous blog about the Ghostwrite vulnerability in the Alibaba T-Head C910 RISC-V-based processor, I noted that the authors of the paper had found more than just that one bug. The additional bugs are worth their own write-up, as they offer some more examples of what looks to be poor testing.

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DVCon Europe 2024 – AI and More

The 2024 DVCon (Design and Verification) Europe conference took place on October 15 and 16, in its traditional location at the Holiday Inn Munich City Centre. This year there was even more talk of artificial intelligence than last year, and quite a few sessions related to virtual platforms. And lots of other interesting presentations and discussions.

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Ghostwrite – Now This is Weird

In August, a strange security vulnerability dubbed “Ghostwrite” was making the rounds in the press. Basically, a vector store instruction on an Alibaba T-Head C910 RISC-V-based processor would just write to a physical address without doing a virtual-to-physical translation or checking any kind of access rights. That is just totally weird. Just how could that be implemented and slip through testing???

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The Quarterly Product and Feature Update

I think of myself to be a technical person. I like computers, simulators, code, things like that. And obviously interacting with people and helping them solve their technical problems using technology I know. However, it seems that one of the most impactful contributions made during my time at Intel was to start a meeting series. Maybe you can call it a process innovation.

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Time to Do Something New

The time has come to do something new. I am leaving Intel (and the Intel Simics team) at the end of September (2024). After more than twenty years with the team and the product this is a big step into the unknown. But when Intel offered a “retirement” package as part of its current round of cost reduction measures, I felt that it was a golden opportunity to find something new to do.

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