4 ms·

I hope for european authorities to force Intel and AMD to offer chips without ME and consorts and providing guaranteed complete documentation and control to the

by madez 9y ago

I hope for european authorities to force Intel and AMD to offer chips without ME and consorts and providing guaranteed complete documentation and control to the users. Food is regularly sampled and controlled. I think the same for electronics is necessary. EU, why do you sleep? 1. Is there a justification for it? Yes, Intel and AMD have together a monopoly for fundamental parts of consumer and business computers. They do not leave the choice to avoid ME and equivalents. The products are fundamental and the functionality can be provenly malicious. That allows anti-trust measures. 1.1 But aren't OpenPOWER, RISC-V, ARM, ..., alternatives? No, because the products either don't exist, are not suitable for the needs, or have similar issues with lack of documentation and guaranteed control for users. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I expect hardware level reverse engineering to check for backdoors. 2. Can authorities force them to change their offering? Not directly, but they can do it indirectly and effectively by forbidding selling their products without change. Or by charging them huge fees for every CPU sold while not offering an alternative. 2.1 Can the authorities check the hardware? Yes, but it is time-consuming and needs experts. Since it could be done for the whole of Europe, the load can be shared. Food controls also need experts, are time-intensive and don't work perfectly. Still, it is working generally good. 3. Is this likely to happen? The authority needs to be willing to face huge and important companies and be able to withstand political pressure. German authorities are hopelessly incompetent when it comes to digitalization and computers. Maybe EU's organisations wake up. They have shown to be willing to face huge corporations and speak clear and understandable words with them.

jacquesm 9y ago
> EU, why do you sleep? Lack of alternatives. Even though NL for instance supplies critical equipment to all fabs there is no way the EU could force Intel or AMD to do their bidding because they could not possibly check if what they agree on is what is actually being done. The EU still sees the USA as an ally (though it is clear the reverse is no longer the case) and this to some extent explains the lack of rigor here. China and Russia are in a better position to deal with this problem and they seem to have chosen to create their own chips rather than to attempt to make a deal with the giants. I'm sure France and/or Germany would love a EU processor if only for the prestige but I'm also quite sure that that processor if and when it saw the light of day could not be trusted any further than Intel or AMD now.
- madez 9y ago
  Why couldn't there be a law requiring all computers sold in the EU to have full documentation and complete controls for the user? I don't think this is impossible or surreal. I think there are ways to check for certain things, if you have enough leverage. Also, if you demand high-level decription of hardware that is turned into circuits in europe, then that would make supervision way easier. As far as I remember there are also centers where Microsoft let's governments see Windows source code. Europe already has chips with the same problems, namely ARM. If there is political pressure to create a new one, I'm confident that they will enforce people-protecting regulations. Also, I don't think Chinese, Russian and USA cips have the same backdoors. Thus it us possible to protect against them by majority vote on output for given input.
- oneweekwonder 9y ago
  > France and/or Germany would love a EU processor I think a EU processor should use layered security[0]. And this is not really SoC silicon level but have a system with 3 cpu's(x86/64, arm, msp/avr). This can enable a workstation/server(x86), firewall(arm), usb and other io filtering(msp/avr) "architecture". Yes this will need custom development and the price will be higher. But what price can u put on the security of the state? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layered_security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layered_security

by madez 9y ago

jacquesm 9y ago

> EU, why do you sleep? Lack of alternatives. Even though NL for instance supplies critical equipment to all fabs there is no way the EU could force Intel or AMD to do their bidding because they could not possibly check if what they agree on is what is actually being done. The EU still sees the USA as an ally (though it is clear the reverse is no longer the case) and this to some extent explains the lack of rigor here. China and Russia are in a better position to deal with this problem and they seem to have chosen to create their own chips rather than to attempt to make a deal with the giants. I'm sure France and/or Germany would love a EU processor if only for the prestige but I'm also quite sure that that processor if and when it saw the light of day could not be trusted any further than Intel or AMD now.

madez 9y ago
Why couldn't there be a law requiring all computers sold in the EU to have full documentation and complete controls for the user? I don't think this is impossible or surreal. I think there are ways to check for certain things, if you have enough leverage. Also, if you demand high-level decription of hardware that is turned into circuits in europe, then that would make supervision way easier. As far as I remember there are also centers where Microsoft let's governments see Windows source code. Europe already has chips with the same problems, namely ARM. If there is political pressure to create a new one, I'm confident that they will enforce people-protecting regulations. Also, I don't think Chinese, Russian and USA cips have the same backdoors. Thus it us possible to protect against them by majority vote on output for given input.
oneweekwonder 9y ago
> France and/or Germany would love a EU processor I think a EU processor should use layered security[0]. And this is not really SoC silicon level but have a system with 3 cpu's(x86/64, arm, msp/avr). This can enable a workstation/server(x86), firewall(arm), usb and other io filtering(msp/avr) "architecture". Yes this will need custom development and the price will be higher. But what price can u put on the security of the state? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layered_security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layered_security