The Angry Path to Zen: AMD Zen Microcode Tools and Insights
Benjamin Kollenda
39th Chaos Communication Congress (39C3): Power Cycles · Day 3 · Saal Fuse
Benjamin Kollenda’s talk, "The Angry Path to Zen: AMD Zen Microcode Tools and Insights," presents a deep dive into the opaque world of AMD Zen microcode. Building on previous work on K8/K10 architectures and drawing inspiration from contemporary research like Google's Zenbleed and related tooling, Kollenda introduces a powerful open-source framework for reverse engineering, analyzing, and experimenting with AMD Zen CPUs at their most fundamental level. The talk elucidates the intricate mechanisms by which complex x64 instructions are translated into internal micro-operations and how microcode updates can fundamentally alter CPU behavior.