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Does the 8000 series i7 support the "ptwrite" instruction?

BHawk
Beginner
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A special extension of the Intel PT control flow tracing feature relies on a new instruction "ptwrite", but most of the latest processors do not support it. Can someone tell me if the new Whiskey Lake processors have it? Or any other recent release? I have ptwrite in a J5005 but it's a tiny Atom processor and we are constantly getting buffer overflows (even without using ptwrite or cycle timing). We need this feature in an i7 for my research project.

 

If you have a machine with this CPU, here is an easy way to check for ptwrite:

 

  1. boot the machine into linux from a USB (if you do not have Linux installed already)
  2. run this command from any shell or terminal:
cd /sys/bus/event_source/devices/intel_pt/ cat caps/ptwrite

If you see "1" in the file then ptwrite is supported (and "0" means not supported). Thanks if anyone can help!

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Oscar_A_Intel1
Employee
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Hello BHawk, Thank you for posting on the Intel Community. I understand that you are looking for assistance about the Intel® Processor Trace (Intel® PT) and the instruction “ptwrite”. For these types of inquiries, please go to the following support groups: Embedded Products Community: https://forums.intel.com/s/topic/0TO0P00000018NIWAY/embedded-products?language=en_US Intel® Developer Zone https://software.intel.com/en-us/forum Resource & Design Center for Development with Intel https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/design/resource-design-center.html Hope this helps! Regards, Oscar A. Intel Customer Support Technician Under Contract to Intel Corporation
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