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posted by takyon on Wednesday November 08 2017, @04:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the sinister-nix dept.

Professor Andrew S. Tanenbaum from the Department of Computer Science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam wrote "An Open Letter to Intel" regarding Intel's use of MINIX 3 to run the Intel Management Engine (video) built into their processors:

Thanks for putting a version of MINIX 3 inside the ME-11 management engine chip used on almost all recent desktop and laptop computers in the world. I guess that makes MINIX the most widely used computer operating system in the world, even more than Windows, Linux, or MacOS. And I didn't even know until I read a press report about it. Also here and here and here and here and here (in Dutch), and a bunch of other places.

[...] Note added later: Some people have pointed out online that if MINIX had a GPL license, Intel might not have used it since then it would have had to publish the modifications to the code. Maybe yes, maybe no, but the modifications were no doubt technical issues involving which mode processes run in, etc. My understanding, however, is that the small size and modular microkernel structure were the primary attractions. Many people (including me) don't like the idea of an all-powerful management engine in there at all (since it is a possible security hole and a dangerous idea in the first place), but that is Intel's business decision and a separate issue from the code it runs. A company as big as Intel could obviously write its own OS if it had to. My point is that big companies with lots of resources and expertise sometimes use microkernels, especially in embedded systems. The L4 microkernel has been running inside smartphone chips for years.

Professor Tanenbaum did the initial design and development of MINIX, a microkernel used primarily for teaching. He has helped guide it through the years as a small community around it has grown. Lately it has adopted much of the NetBSD userspace. The IME is a full operating system system running inside x86 computers. It gets run before whatever system on the actual hard disk even starts booting.

Related: Intel Management Engine Partially Defeated
EFF: Intel's Management Engine is a Security Hazard
Disabling Intel ME 11 Via Undocumented Mode
How-To: Disabling the Intel Management Engine
Positive Technologies - Learn and Secure : Intel ME: The Way of Static Analysis (takyon: I marked this one to not display at the time since it was a blog post from April and ran within hours of the preceding IME story.)
Purism Disables Intel Management Engine on Librem Laptops


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 08 2017, @11:39PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 08 2017, @11:39PM (#594310)

    > being Torvalds' OS-design teacher is kind of like being Einstein's math teacher

    No, that's not a great analogy. Einstein came up with something wonderfully simple. Linux isn't simple, it's a monolithic kernel with millions of lines of code. If someone is Einstein in this analogy, it's Tanenbaum, because Minix3 is quite simple by comparison. Which makes Intel the guys who took the equation E=mc^2 and made a weapon out of it.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Bot on Thursday November 09 2017, @12:15AM (2 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Thursday November 09 2017, @12:15AM (#594316) Journal

    E=mc^2 is not Einstein's, nice parallel anyway.

    Honestly, between Tanenbaum and Torvalds it seems to be going like this:

    - so, we use a microkernel to split stuff between userland processes
    - that's slow, let's make a simple and fast monolithic kernel instead...
    the monolith is becoming complex, let's dynamically load modules instead...
    the kernel is insecure let's put it in a VM...
    the VM is inefficient let's put it in a container...
    root is too powerful let's use some kind of access control...
    - hey how's your microkernel coming along, Linus?
    - fuck you, prof.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @01:19AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @01:19AM (#594335)

      MINIX is like a bowl of rice. Linux is like a station wagon full of spaghetti. Never underestimate the popularity of a station wagon full of spaghetti hurtling down the highway.

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @02:11AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @02:11AM (#594344)

        I would bet a dime that the author of the above comment is a pastafarian.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @05:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @05:22AM (#595042)

    Einstein came up with something wonderfully simple.

    Please try to say the same thing again after trying to study General Relativity.