Intel x86 cores have had Last Branch Records (LBRs) and Branch Trace Store (BTS) since at least Merom in 2006 [1][2]. Nowadays, there's Processor Trace (PT) or Precise Event-Based Sampling (PEBS) which can provide even more information. PT in particular is almost purpose-built to enable this kind of trace reconstruction.
[2] The MSRs for LBRs (MSR_LASTBRANCH_*_{TO,FROM}_IP) and BTS (IA32_DS_AREA) are described in Volume 4, Section 2.2 of the SDM: "MSRS IN THE INTEL® CORE™ 2 PROCESSOR FAMILY". Core 2 was launched in 2006.
Does intel still have the really toxic contractor culture with a TON of h1b's? I don't see them rebounding until they get quality employees and not pay severely under market through contractors.
I work remotely on a small-ish research team. Almost all of my immediate colleagues are in the US or Western Europe. Most (all?) of the folks on P- and E-Core Engineering that I work with are full employees (i.e. not contractors) in the US or Israel. I'm not sure I'd know if they were H1Bs, but they're generally very knowledgeable and hardworking. From my perspective, there's little outsourcing on the core businesses (pun fully intended).
As far as comp goes, mine is competitive with Bay Area FAANG.
At Berkeley, course numbers >100 are upper-division, and those <100 are lower-division, introductory classes. Especially in the CS department, the upper-division courses are far from introductory. 61B is the the second in the 61A-B-C series, which is required for all CS majors. (A fourth lower-division class, CS 70 ("Discrete Mathematics and Probability"), is also required, but is independent of the 61 series.)
X11 forwarding for Cadence's chip layout tooling is practically unusable nowadays! Sub-1 FPS, even on a reasonable 1 Gbps pipe with only 3-4 ms ping. I had to use NoMachine when I was doing that work -- proprietary tooling that does the "simpler" image/video streaming.
(Disclaimer: I work at Intel, but not on server products. Opinions are my own.)
There's a lot more that goes into a server platform than just the cores, for instance: the BIOS code, the BMC support, the maturity of the motherboard designs, etc. These are all areas where Intel seems to still have an edge -- but I'm also very excited about our upcoming server architectures on the core/compute side.
Further optimization are certainly possible, especially as the hardware improves and gains additional capabilities. With regards to your suggestion, this is essentially what already happens, thanks to the magic of out-of-order cores.
Check out angr [1], a symbolic execution engine, and claripy [2], its frontend to SMT solvers like z3. Depending on your background, I probably wouldn't describe angr as "for newbies," but claripy is a very clean SMT interface!
Another approach with which I've had success is to use something like PCBite's probes [1] to stab the little bits of solder sticking out the sides of the WSON package. PCBite's probes are excellent; they're sharp enough bite into the solder and hold themselves in place. (Those stalks aren't stiff; they support themselves by digging in.) PCBite is an all-around great product and definitely worth the somewhat-steep-for-a-hobbyist price tag, in my opinion.
Very cool. Seeing as those probes are far more general hardware and offer extra capabilities which could be really nice to have around, that's an attractive option. Strong contender for best approach to date for my case (and just overall valuable information).
Thank you for sharing your experience!
This is one of my favorite episodes. I always thought the thin veiling helped to demonstrate the absurdity of both situations -- perhaps it was even done intentionally for that reason.
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14670586/what-is-the-ove...
[2] The MSRs for LBRs (MSR_LASTBRANCH_*_{TO,FROM}_IP) and BTS (IA32_DS_AREA) are described in Volume 4, Section 2.2 of the SDM: "MSRS IN THE INTEL® CORE™ 2 PROCESSOR FAMILY". Core 2 was launched in 2006.