International Business Machines Corporation

Anup Wadia

Anthony J Bybell

Kevin Neal Magill

Jeffrey Richard Summers

John B Blankenship

A processor and a method for privilege escalation in a processor are provided. The method may comprise fetching an instruction from a fetch address, where the instruction requires the processor to be in supervisor mode for execution, and determining whether the fetch address is within a predetermined address range. The instruction is filtered through an instruction mask and then it is determined whether the instruction, after being filtered through the mask, equals the value in an instruction value compare register. The processor privilege is raised to supervisor mode for execution of the instruction in response to the fetch address being within the predetermined address range and the filtered instruction equaling the value in the instruction value compare register, wherein the processor privilege is raised to supervisor mode without use of an interrupt. The processor privilege returns to its previous level after execution of the instruction.

Fine-grained privilege escalation

A method for generating a timing path software monitor for identifying a critical timing path in hardware devices coupled between first and second components is provided. The method includes generating a static timing report associated with the hardware devices. The static timing report has names of the hardware devices and wire names associated with wires coupled to the hardware devices. The method further includes automatically generating the timing path software monitor based on the static timing report that monitors binary values associated with the wire names at a first clock cycle and a transition of binary values associated with the wire names during a second clock cycle after the first clock cycle. The timing path software monitor indicates a critical timing path is identified when the transition of one of the binary values received by the second component occurs during the second clock cycle.

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Wake Forest, NC, United States of America

Anup Wadia