<![endif] Advertisements Random ASCII Forecast for randomascii: programming, tech topics, with a chance of unicycling #branding Skip to content Home About #access #masthead #header ← Analyzing a Confusing Crash–Stack Walks Gone Bad #nav-above Finding a CPU Design Bug in the Xbox 360 Posted on January 7, 2018 by brucedawson .entry-meta The recent reveal of Meltdown and Spectre reminded me of the time I found a related design bug in the Xbox 360 CPU – a newly added instruction whose mere existence was dangerous. Back in 2005 I was the Xbox 360 CPU guy. I lived and breathed that chip. I still have a 30-cm CPU wafer on my wall, and a four-foot poster of the CPU’s layout. I spent so much time understanding how that CPU’s pipelines worked that when I was asked to investigate some impossible crashes I was able to intuit how a design bug mu...