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Meltdown, aka “Dear Intel, you suck”

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21–30 of 176 posts

Re: Meltdown, aka “Dear Intel, you suck”

#21
post #4

May be time for OpenBSD people ( if they have the resources ) to build a CPU from ground up with RISC-V?

OpenBSD has struggled at times to pay their power bills. They don't have the resources to branch off into building new hardware from first principles.

Re: Meltdown, aka “Dear Intel, you suck”

#22
post #20
post #4

May be time for OpenBSD people ( if they have the resources ) to build a CPU from ground up with RISC-V?

There are already CPUs available that aren't affected by these bugs. The problem is that most people want the fastest CPU for a given price -- and making a new, slow, expensive CPU isn't going to solve that problem.

Which widely available and affordable CPUs aren't affected by Spectre?

Re: Meltdown, aka “Dear Intel, you suck”

#23
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just crowdsource a few billion $ for R&D and we are good to go.

The first and most important phases of hardware design are a lot like software development. If open source folks can write an OS without much funding, then they can design a CPU.

Arguably, the most important phase of hardware design is actual production of said design.

Re: Meltdown, aka “Dear Intel, you suck”

#25
post #17
post #6

Is there not some sort of OS embargo consortium that could be created to resolve this?

The problem with embargoes is that they tend to run so long that users are put at risk unnecessarily. Most of the reasons for extending embargoes way beyond the time needed to prepare and test patches are just bullshit. For example, from the conversation on the KRACK embargo: >Q. What is the rationale on extending the embargo so long? To give vendors a chance to patch? It seems like once people in the know know about…

yes im sure security agencies spend as long as possible "evaluating the problem"

Re: Meltdown, aka “Dear Intel, you suck”

#26
post #22
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already CPUs available that aren't affected by these bugs. The problem is that most people want the fastest CPU for a given price -- and making a new, slow, expensive CPU isn't going to solve that problem.

Which widely available and affordable CPUs aren't affected by Spectre?

Most of the ARM CPUs are not affected. For instance, the Raspberry Pi beards are not affected.

Re: Meltdown, aka “Dear Intel, you suck”

#27
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first and most important phases of hardware design are a lot like software development. If open source folks can write an OS without much funding, then they can design a CPU.

Arguably , the most important phase of hardware design is actual production of said design.

I somewhat doubt that is still the case, with modern EDA tools.

Re: Meltdown, aka “Dear Intel, you suck”

#28
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is affected by Spectre, but my understanding is that Meltdown is a particularly powerful "version" of Spectre that only affects Intel CPUs ?

My ELI5 attempt: There are 3 vulnerabilities. Meltdown is 1 of the 3. Meltdown is pretty much Intel only. Some ARM SoCs are also affected, but these are relatively rare. AMD64 is unaffected by Meltdown. Spectre are the other 2 vulnerabilities. Spectre affects pretty much everyone. Meltdown is more severe, and more of a blunder. For a technical explanation, see [1]. Was recently referred to at HN as well. [1] https://…

Do you have any source on why AMD64 is unaffected? The paper only mentions that they couldn't make their current approach work on AMD, but it doesn't rule out that it could be improved and made work

Re: Meltdown, aka “Dear Intel, you suck”

#29
post #24

Meanwhile I have seen nothing from QNX or Integrity...

I wonder to what extent QNX would be affected. It all depends on whether or not they map their micro kernel into the same address space as the application, for a micro kernel there is absolutely no reason to do that, the only things you might want to re-map are the message buffers and that can be done with some page table trickery.

Re: Meltdown, aka “Dear Intel, you suck”

#30
post #21
post #4

May be time for OpenBSD people ( if they have the resources ) to build a CPU from ground up with RISC-V?

OpenBSD has struggled at times to pay their power bills. They don't have the resources to branch off into building new hardware from first principles.

That's a matter of finding them funding then, and if there are people that I would think are capable of pulling something like that off it would be them. All of this assumes that they are willing of course, and it would be rude to assume they are without asking them.
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