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The industry will probably get dragged, kicking and screaming, into using tagged pointers. CPU could then use the information to put safe lid on speculative exe
by rini17 7y ago
The industry will probably get dragged, kicking and screaming, into using tagged pointers. CPU could then use the information to put safe lid on speculative execution.
And it will be tough as no compiler supports it, moreover C/C++ are architected from the beginnign to not bother with runtime information about object types/sizes.
- effie 7y agoThat sounds interesting. Is there some analysis out there which shows tagged pointers to be superior to the status quo?
- pas 7y agoUltimately, if we do transparent per process memory encryption, then we can let the CPU do all the speculation it wants, but the result will be gibberish. And it's a lot easier to do a simple key switch than doing a full TLB flush. Of course, it probably doesn't do much against/for the timing attacks (side channels).