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posted by
martyb
on Saturday February 16 2019, @02:08PM
from the so-that-means...-we-are-screwed dept.
from the so-that-means...-we-are-screwed dept.
Google security researchers have come to the conclusion that speculative execution attacks are here to stay without drastic changes to modern CPU architectures, such as removing speculative execution entirely.
Spectre is here to stay: An analysis of side-channels and speculative execution
Related:
Patch for Intel Speculative Execution Vulnerability Could Reduce Performance by 5 to 35% [Update: 2]
Qualcomm Joins Others in Confirming its CPUs Suffer From Spectre, and Other Meltdown News
Congress Questions Chipmakers About Meltdown and Spectre
What Impact Has Meltdown/Spectre Had on YOUR Systems?
Intel Admits a Load of its CPUs Have Spectre V2 Flaw That Can't be Fixed
Intel FPU Speculation Vulnerability Confirmed
New Spectre Variant SpectreRSB Targets Return Stack Buffer
Intel Discloses a Speculative Execution Attack in Software Guard eXtensions (SGX)
Intel 'Gags' Linux Distros From Revealing Performance Hit From Spectre Patches
MIT Researchers Claim to Have a Solution for Some Speculative Execution Attacks
Spectre, Meltdown Researchers Unveil 7 More Speculative Execution Attacks
New Side-Channel Leak: Researchers Attack Operating System Page Caches
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Spectre is Here to Stay: An Analysis of Side-Channels and Speculative Execution
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Slowly and surely the unix crept up on the Nintendo user ...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday February 16 2019, @08:58PM (1 child)
That's a great point. I never had my hands on an Amiga but always admired them. I think they made better use of sort of distributed processing with more intelligent peripherals, but I may be wrong. Probably much cleaner tighter code too. I've always been surprised (annoyed) by how much work most CPUs do that could be done by auxiliary processors. I can't remember specifics, but I clearly remember machines where the main (and only) CPU did RAM refresh, CRT character scanning, etc.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday February 16 2019, @10:09PM
It had dedicated chipsets to offload much of the work onto, and tight code? Haven't examined the code though IIRC it was leaked a few years ago, but that was definitely my impression. This was the end of the classic microcomputer days, OS code wasn't something written in a high level language then trusted to the compiler, it was typically hand massaged by people that read 8-bit. Even application code normally got that treatment, after some profiling to see which loops got executed most often (we're all lazy and we'd often not get around to optimizing the bits that didn't get called often. Unless we were running out of storage space.)
It had sound and video systems that pretty much did their job all on their lonesomes - the cpu pointed them in the right direction and they took it from there. The CPU doesn't need to be all that fast in that position - it just needs to do what a CPU traditionally does, what a Z80 did well enough and fast enough for most things. It executes the main logic of the program and runs the shows behind the scenes. You want a video? Point the vidcard at the file and tell it to go. Want to read a bunch of data from the HDD? Tell the controller what you need and where you want it put, check back every few cycles to see if it's done yet.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?