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posted by
cmn32480
on Wednesday May 23 2018, @06:47PM
from the your-computer-is-not-a-fast-PDP-11 dept.
from the your-computer-is-not-a-fast-PDP-11 dept.
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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If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
(Score: 2) by qzm on Wednesday May 23 2018, @08:44PM
What has happened had nothing to do with C, high or low level. They obviously have no actual experience of the situation.
The problem is caused by the desire for high performance and backwards compatibility.
Absolutely nothing directly to do with C. There is nothing in C that would require any of this.
Mostly they appear to be working on the preemie that C is old, and 8086 architecture I is old, so C must control that architecture, which is just stupid.
C could just add easily target the internal physical architecture of it was exposed.
Im sure they have done pretty language they think is magically better, but this cart they are pushing has no wheels.