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MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

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Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#21

Post by RubenSandwich »

tw30tw wrote: post #18
jhoechtl wrote: post #5

>> Note to AMD: Now might be a good time to remove similar functionality from your CPU lines to try to win market share from Intel. Better to do so now before Intel removes the “Management Engine.” Strike while the iron’s hot and all that. I am absolutely certain this comes with backing maybe even pressure from government surveillance bodies. You don't have it - you don't get a contract. AMD does already follow suit…

Then they should release the same CPU without the ME. Like they do for overclocking purposes. Leave it to the consumers to choose.

To plays devil's advocate for AMD here. Then America and the other Five Eyes might not allow you to sell your product in their countries without an ME. Thereby you lose a huge market because let's face it most modern nations are now doing surveillance on their citizens, not just the US.

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#23

Post by Foxboron »

mrweasel wrote: post #20

Is anyone actually using Intel Management Engine? I understand why Intel would have it as a feature, but the majority of all users, including large companies and other organisation with 1000+ desktops, don't need it or use other solutions. Besides not being able to turn it of, it actually seems like a nice enough offer, I just never heard of anyone using it. Is there a demo of the ME somewhere?

Intel ME is part of the initialization of the CPU during boot. You are running Intel ME wether or not you think its usefull. Removing Intel ME, or disabling it, results in your computer stopping after 30 sec. Much of the work to remove Intel ME is more about neutralizing the firmware.

Pretty great talk from 32C3 about Intel ME https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7352-towards_reasonably_trustwor...

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#25

Post by garaetjjte »

mrweasel wrote: post #20

Is anyone actually using Intel Management Engine? I understand why Intel would have it as a feature, but the majority of all users, including large companies and other organisation with 1000+ desktops, don't need it or use other solutions. Besides not being able to turn it of, it actually seems like a nice enough offer, I just never heard of anyone using it. Is there a demo of the ME somewhere?

Intel ME is also used for DRM.

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#26

Post by lottin »

gsich wrote: post #14
lallysingh wrote: post #4

I don't understand why AMD isn't all over this as a product differentiator

Because this can be a useful feature. (Compare to ILO on servers)

They don't need to remove it, adding the possibility to turn it off should suffice.

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#27

Post by mrweasel »

Foxboron wrote: post #23
mrweasel wrote: post #20

Is anyone actually using Intel Management Engine? I understand why Intel would have it as a feature, but the majority of all users, including large companies and other organisation with 1000+ desktops, don't need it or use other solutions. Besides not being able to turn it of, it actually seems like a nice enough offer, I just never heard of anyone using it. Is there a demo of the ME somewhere?

Intel ME is part of the initialization of the CPU during boot. You are running Intel ME wether or not you think its usefull. Removing Intel ME, or disabling it, results in your computer stopping after 30 sec. Much of the work to remove Intel ME is more about neutralizing the firmware. Pretty great talk from 32C3 about Intel ME https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7352-towards_reasonably_trustwor...

That wasn't really my point. Arguably it should be a feature you specifically enable, or better yet only present if you buy that option.

If you ignore all that, then Intel ME actually seems rather useful, for a subset of users, specifically organisations with large numbers of machines deployed. Still I'm not sure that even the target audience of ME is actually using it, so it seems like a huge waste of time and money from Intel perspective.

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#28

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

ngneer wrote: post #10

I do not like the post. It seems scant on details and rife with conclusions. The Google presentation linked to has a bit more detail on the underlying technologies. A modern processor is a complex beast, and a security argument can always be made to reduce complexity. Citation needed for espionage and privacy evasion use cases...

That's not how reliable, safe, secure engineering works. You don't consider stuff safe until someone proves that it will kill you/let people steal your data/whatever, but rather everything is suspect unless it can be demonstrated that according to current state of the art/best practices, it can reasonably be expected to be safe.

A bridge isn't considered safe until it collapses, it is considered unsafe until it has been shown that according to our current understanding of physics and material properties, it can be expected to hold up.

The same should obviously apply to software and computing hardware.

Re: MINIX – The most popular OS in the world, thanks to Intel

#29

Post by mwexler »

Good to know that those hours in school wrestling with recreating parts of Minix for my OS class weren't wasted.

But seriously, the Tannenbaum stuff (book, code) was really impressive, if painful to do on 3.5" floppies.

I'm just assuming that by now, we'd have something better for embedded OSes in one of the most central computing approaches used in the world.

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