Researchers Develop Bug-blocking Chip Monitor

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed technology that can fence off microprocessor bugs and keep them from seizing up a PC.

For the past two years they've been working on what they call a "semantic guardian." It's a tiny monitor that lives on the microprocessor, checking it to see if the chip is being asked to do something that its designers hadn't predicted in their quality assurance testing.

Companies such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices test their products rigorously, but in the real world chips are often asked to do new things that could potentially cause a crash. The semantic guardian can identify these untested states and then slow down the processor by kicking it into a safe mode, where many of the chip's performance-enhancing bells and whistles are disabled.