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"C is Not a Low-Level Language"

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday May 23 2018, @06:47PM   
from the your-computer-is-not-a-fast-PDP-11 dept.

pillo writes:

Very interesting article at the IEEE ACM by David Chisnall.

In the wake of the recent Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, it's worth spending some time looking at root causes. Both of these vulnerabilities involved processors speculatively executing instructions past some kind of access check and allowing the attacker to observe the results via a side channel. The features that led to these vulnerabilities, along with several others, were added to let C programmers continue to believe they were programming in a low-level language, when this hasn't been the case for decades.

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Original Submission

• Re:It never was... Re:It never was... (Score: 4, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Wednesday May 23 2018, @07:48PM (2 children)

  by Dr Spin (5239) on Wednesday May 23 2018, @07:48PM (#683239)

  C on a PDP-11 is essentially structured assembly language

  True, but the funny bit is that the PDP11 was designed to be a hardware Fortran machine!!!

  --
  Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
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  Interesting=2, Funny=1, Overrated=1, Total=4
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• Re:It never was... (Score: 5, Informative) by mechanicjay on Wednesday May 23 2018, @08:57PM

  by mechanicjay (7) <mechanicjayNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Wednesday May 23 2018, @08:57PM (#683279) Homepage Journal

  Gonna need a source for that claim, because it doesn't ring true to me.

  --
  My VMS box beat up your Windows box.

  Parent

• Re:It never was... (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @09:30PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 23 2018, @09:30PM (#683289)

  Are you sure you haven't confused it with the Burroughs B1700?

  Parent