To Study How Chips Really Work, MIT Researchers Built Their Own Operating System

To study how chips really work, MIT researchers built their own operating system

The new "Fractal" operating system kernel, developed at MIT, gives researchers a clearer look at how computer chips work internally. It was used to study the branch predictors inside Apple's M1 processor, where it revealed a potential vulnerability to major speculative attacks.

To study how chips really work, MIT researchers built their own operating system – OSnews

A fascinating novel approach by researchers at MIT, called Fractal, to study in-depth how processors actually work. A team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) decided to build something different. Fractal, an operating system kernel written from the ground up, treats the hardware itself as the object of study. Its first major use, a deep look at branch predictors — a CPU’s way of guessing what code to run ne…