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To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
51–60 of 64 posts
Re: To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
#52Hi everyone, Joseph (paper author) here. You can find Fractal on Github: https://github.com/jprx/fractal The full paper, slides from my S&P talk, and all our experiment data can be found at the Fractal project website here: https://fractal-os.com We've been building Fractal internally for a very long time (first commit was almost exactly 2 years ago), so it's exciting to finally share it with the world. Let me know w…
At the risk of sounding extremely dumb, I have a question for you: if the hardware is susceptible to something that you can't actually reproduce with the software everyone runs on it, who should care, and why? Is it even really fair to call it a vulnerability at that point? Is the idea that this is supposed to help identify a different mechanism of exploiting the vulnerabilities with the shipped OS too? To give an an…
As long as we're using analogies, let's use a car one. If your car gets into a car crash, you want it to be safe and not explode, yeah? Would you rather drive around, and see if it happens to explode if you happen to get into a crash, or would you rather setup a test arena, crash as many copies of your car, as many times as possible, to see if it ever also explodes. And then, once you've shown it can explode when the left back window is halfway down and the passenger door is halfway open, then from there it's easier to figure out how those set of circumstances might actually happen in the real world.
It's research, which often involves a ton of work for zero pay off. It's usually thankless and unrewarding, on the off chance that there is some exploit to be had.
Re: To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
#53That title gave me a mild chuckle. As if the chips were wonders of nature that you can find deep in the forest, bring to a lab and build an operating system for them to study. Nice one! :-)
Re: To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
#54Hi everyone, Joseph (paper author) here. You can find Fractal on Github: https://github.com/jprx/fractal The full paper, slides from my S&P talk, and all our experiment data can be found at the Fractal project website here: https://fractal-os.com We've been building Fractal internally for a very long time (first commit was almost exactly 2 years ago), so it's exciting to finally share it with the world. Let me know w…
have you considered forking existing OS and implementing changes that you needed instead? it's hard for me to justify the tremendous effort of implementing the OS from scratch, instead of adding the functionality that you need to for example linux or xv6. > (it) exposes primitives that let a single experiment switch privilege levels at runtime while executing the same instructions in the same address space. i think t…
It’s not actually possible to have the kernel execute user pages like this on most modern systems
Re: To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
#55I'm really excited about this work, although I haven't read the code or paper yet. It seems to me Fractal would be ideal for running benchmarks for compilers so that the OS-induced noise is kept to a minimum. Author: do you see issues with that use case?
I think you're better off watching any of the various recordings "Performance Matters" conference talks[0] by Emery Berger to learn about all the ways that developers are benchmarking the wrong thing using the wrong techniques, and what you could do instead
Re: To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
#56I am very confused by calling this kind of work "researches". They are not pushing the boundary of human knowledge - they are playing game (reverse engineering) with other human.. maybe that is me having a very narrow definition of "research"
I think I see your point: how can you "research" something that was carefully constructed by highly skilled engineers and scientists who have access to every design document, artifact, and test used to build the CPU.
I don't have an answer to your question but I think you're being unfairly downvoted.
Re: To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
#57Hi everyone, Joseph (paper author) here. You can find Fractal on Github: https://github.com/jprx/fractal The full paper, slides from my S&P talk, and all our experiment data can be found at the Fractal project website here: https://fractal-os.com We've been building Fractal internally for a very long time (first commit was almost exactly 2 years ago), so it's exciting to finally share it with the world. Let me know w…
At the risk of sounding extremely dumb, I have a question for you: if the hardware is susceptible to something that you can't actually reproduce with the software everyone runs on it, who should care, and why? Is it even really fair to call it a vulnerability at that point? Is the idea that this is supposed to help identify a different mechanism of exploiting the vulnerabilities with the shipped OS too? To give an an…
> that you can't actually reproduce with the software
If the vendors of that software are not aware of the failure mode then they may accidentally introduce it by later code changes. Systems evolve. Blind evolution leads to pernicious and widespread failures.
Re: To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
#58Hi everyone, Joseph (paper author) here. You can find Fractal on Github: https://github.com/jprx/fractal The full paper, slides from my S&P talk, and all our experiment data can be found at the Fractal project website here: https://fractal-os.com We've been building Fractal internally for a very long time (first commit was almost exactly 2 years ago), so it's exciting to finally share it with the world. Let me know w…
Can it run Doom?
....no, Crysis! :-P
scnr
Re: To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
#59Hi everyone, Joseph (paper author) here. You can find Fractal on Github: https://github.com/jprx/fractal The full paper, slides from my S&P talk, and all our experiment data can be found at the Fractal project website here: https://fractal-os.com We've been building Fractal internally for a very long time (first commit was almost exactly 2 years ago), so it's exciting to finally share it with the world. Let me know w…
Hello Joseph. I am awesome Joseph. I am at MIT LL. Can’t wait to check this out a bit deeper.
Re: To study how chips work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great analogy. Li-ion batteries have several layers of defense against exploding, one of which are vents that, if all else fails, let the hydrogen gas safely escape rather than building up. It's perfectly fair for independent testers to say "we haven't found any flaws in the protection circuitry yet, but we should bypass it to see if the vents work as designed".
I'm not disputing that it's fair to investigate that. What I'm asking is if it's fair to then call it a vulnerability without establishing that the thing is, in fact, vulnerable as a result. I would say it's like calling the battery a fire hazard if the vents don't work, but actually that's not analogous because the necessity for vents doesn't merely arise from the need to protect against bad design of the protection…
If removing the safety from the battery helps you more quickly find ways to put it into over temp, then you put the safety back on and see if any of the previous findings lead to over temp, then yes it is useful.
Most OS will trip up and halt if you "drive off-road" so I'm assuming their bare metal OS gets them back to testing without causing a reboot.