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Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

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Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#31

Post by vigilant »

adrianN wrote: post #15
johnm1019 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing it's not that simple because there may be situations when the camera has power and is capturing an image (think hot-standby) but is not transmitting image data to the world outside the sensor package.

I don't want my camera to capture pictures without the LED being on, ever.

And what if I turn on the camera for a tenth of a second, take a picture, and turn it off. You won't notice the LED being on for a tenth of a second. Software makes it easier to prevent such things.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#32

Post by misnome »

a-no-n wrote: post #28

And my car has a jet engine because flames come out the back when I floor it. No touchscreen, no serious advances; only designer-first churn and imposing clunky acce$$orie$. Apple, in the computer industry, is chopped, unless radical, turnaround action is taken immediately. Sales of iPhone are also down because of lackluster improvements and declining value-for-dollar. Three straight quarters of revenue decline, the…

> acce$$orie$. Apple, in the computer industry,

I'm sure this will be completely true, unlike every single other 'prediction' ever made without qualification, in their entire history, made every single time they release a new product.

Substituting dollars for 's' also makes the writer even more respectable and objective, just like writing 'Microsoft' with dollars.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#33

Post by CapacitorSet »

vigilant wrote: post #31
adrianN wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want my camera to capture pictures without the LED being on, ever.

And what if I turn on the camera for a tenth of a second, take a picture, and turn it off. You won't notice the LED being on for a tenth of a second. Software makes it easier to prevent such things.

Why not both? It is trivial to make a circuit such that the LED is on if either there is power to the camera, or the software tells you to.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#34

Post by revelation »

joecool1029 wrote: post #30
revelation wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know, spare one of the trillion transistors to switch power to 1) camera and 2) LED. There, solved. No full-powered ARM needed to control an indicator light.

Yo dawg. I heard you like ARMs, so we put an ARM on your ARM. https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/wiki/Specification---Fea... ^^ did everyone already miss that the webcam was an entire SoC and not just a sensor hooked up to UVC?

Hence why you power-cycle the thing.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#35

Post by sctb »

revelation wrote: post #8

Who cares, now the LED is connected to the "secure enclave" ARM, previously it was connected to the SMC ARM. The point is: no frikken ARM should control the LED.

We detached this flagged subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12824767 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#36

Post by joecool1029 »

revelation wrote: post #34
joecool1029 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yo dawg. I heard you like ARMs, so we put an ARM on your ARM. https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/wiki/Specification---Fea... ^^ did everyone already miss that the webcam was an entire SoC and not just a sensor hooked up to UVC?

Hence why you power-cycle the thing.

What? How is that supposed to help anything. It's not like you can physically disconnect the webcam without disassembling the panel.

The crazy part is you don't even know if it's still recording with the entire laptop off. Could it not, in theory, draw power off the main battery independent of the system being on? It certainly should be able to while in sleep mode.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#37

Post by revelation »

joecool1029 wrote: post #36
revelation wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence why you power-cycle the thing.

What? How is that supposed to help anything. It's not like you can physically disconnect the webcam without disassembling the panel. The crazy part is you don't even know if it's still recording with the entire laptop off. Could it not, in theory, draw power off the main battery independent of the system being on? It certainly should be able to while in sleep mode.

Before we shrinked transistors to a mere atoms wide their main purpose was in switching power.

And no, it's not connected to the main battery, because presumably it runs on 3.3V and maybe even some more exotic voltages for the image sensor. That needs to be regulated.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#38

Post by monocasa »

dom0 wrote: post #29
ginko wrote: post #4

Not really that surprising. Your average laptop nowadays probably has more ARM cores than x86 cores. They're in all kinds of peripherials like wifi controllers, power supplies, harddisk controllers, GPU job control, heck even AMD's recent APUs come with an integrated Cortex-A5.[1] ARM cores are everywhere, people just don't know about it. [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/6007/amd-2013-apus-to-include-...

Intel platforms also had an ARC processor (they approximately cater the same markets as ARM minus mobile) for years in the ME. AMD does the same thing with an ARM core. Practically all peripherals contain at least one programmable processor. Remote management / IPMI also usually works with an entirely separate ARM computer that's integrated with the main computers graphics unit -- basically a shared framebuffer, just…

Fun fact: ARC derives originally from the SuperFX inside some SNES cartridges like Star Fox.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#39

Post by halflings »

vigilant wrote: post #31
adrianN wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want my camera to capture pictures without the LED being on, ever.

And what if I turn on the camera for a tenth of a second, take a picture, and turn it off. You won't notice the LED being on for a tenth of a second. Software makes it easier to prevent such things.

I would guess you could do the same with a circuit, even if that means you lose on flexibility (but given the concerns of many users, I'd say it's worthy).

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#40

Post by aexaey »

userbinator wrote: post #18
ginko wrote: post #4

Not really that surprising. Your average laptop nowadays probably has more ARM cores than x86 cores. They're in all kinds of peripherials like wifi controllers, power supplies, harddisk controllers, GPU job control, heck even AMD's recent APUs come with an integrated Cortex-A5.[1] ARM cores are everywhere, people just don't know about it. [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/6007/amd-2013-apus-to-include-...

Laptops have what is known as an "embedded controller" to handle peripherals like keyboard/touchpad, power management, and fan control. Most of them seem to be low-power 8/16-bit MCUs like 8051 and H8S, but I wouldn't be surprised if newer ones use ARM too. ...and don't forget Intel ME, which is not ARM but another processor in the system.

Most Chromebooks have embedded controller running on ARM specifically.

https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/ec-development

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