Hard Core Challenge

I just heard about an old challenge from Donald Knuth. Figure out what your computer is doing during a one second interval. Here is a reference to the challenge. My first thought was how the heck am I going to get access to everything the computer is doing? Maybe I could hook into some low level access point.


Then I figure if I am record all these operations, wouldn't my recorder itself be using up a bunch of resources during that second? So in essence, I might be records the operations of my recorder itself. Sounds like the movie Inception.


I do like a good challenge. Let's see if I can even get a good start on this task. I have already emailed a C programming hacker to see what he thinks about the challenge. He is a Knuth fan, so that might help with the cause.