6 ms·

These are gamechanging. Anapurna labs is the team that Amazon acquired to design the custom silicon. They have a track record of amazing innovation, including p

These are gamechanging. Anapurna labs is the team that Amazon acquired to design the custom silicon. They have a track record of amazing innovation, including powering EC2's 25gbps network stack, and the Nitro accelerator cards that offload critical security functionality from the CPU. Since Anapurna designed these from scratch, they've built higher levels of security into the architecture, including fully encrypted DRAM.

wmf 6y ago
AMD "Rome" EPYC has RAM encryption and came out almost a year earlier BTW.
- kixiQu 6y ago
  Is there a public cloud VM using it that we could compare for price? My understanding of typical benchmarks is that there are a lot of snitty details that need to be matched up in order to do a cost-performance comparison.
  - wmf 6y ago
    https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/announcing-the-n2d-vm-family-based-on-amd https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/announcing-th... https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/hbv2series-vms-are-now-generally-available/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/hbv2series-vms-are... https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-new-amd-powered-compute-optimized-ec2-instances-c5a-c5ad/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-new-amd-powere... (no pricing)
    - tpetry 6y ago
      They do have rome cpus but not anyone is stating whether they use the ram encryption features.
      - wmf 6y ago
        I'm pretty skeptical of the threat model for (non-attested) memory encryption in public cloud; maybe there isn't one.
        _msw_ 6y ago
        I'm curious about your thoughts on the threat model when a cloud provider is building and operating the silicon too, and they aren't exclusively procuring silicon from suppliers that are the likes of Intel and AMD. Is it a particular certification that would help you trust it? A third party audit? How does it compare to how you establish trust in AMD or Intel on their design, implementation, policy, and practices?
- ksec 6y ago
  I still dont understand how AMD could have a chip announced 18 months ago, shipped nearly 12 months ago, Announced by AWS 6 months ago and is still not available.
  - wmf 6y ago
    Azure went GA with Rome in Feb and Google in April, so AWS is not that late. I wonder if supply is low. One disadvantage of AWS is that they're so large they can't GA anything in low quantities because it would run out immediately.
    - _msw_ 6y ago
      Disclosure: I work at Amazon on building cloud infrastructure. That is an insightful general observation, though my saying so should not be interpreted as any specific statement on this launch. :-) The bar on quality and scale is high. I don't see this as a disadvantage, though some customers may not recognize the value of experiences that we strive to make "invisible." You might not appreciate it until you have a bad experience somewhere else. Personally I think about it like ordering things on Amazon.com. I got really used to an experience where I almost always get something I ordered within a delivery date shown on the website. Since COVID-19, I've started ordering some things from other sites, and a couple advertised "ships tomorrow, 2 day shipping!" But really, ordering the item just turned into a third party drop ship, and the item came a week later than "advertised". No general complaints, given the global situation today, just a general observation about customer experiences, and how unconscious expectations grow over time.
      - _msw_ 6y ago
        Reading my comment again, I feel that I should add: not delivering on time makes us very anxious, because we don't want to deliver a bad customer experience that comes with being late. That's why when uncertainty is introduced in the system, delivery estimates sometimes get pushed out significantly, or an estimated date isn't provided at all. When we announced that C5a was in the works, without a date, it does leave you (the customer) wondering when it's going to arrive. Quite a lot has transpired since the announcement, and we are still working hard to deliver this as quickly and safely as we can.

wmf 6y ago

AMD "Rome" EPYC has RAM encryption and came out almost a year earlier BTW.

kixiQu 6y ago
Is there a public cloud VM using it that we could compare for price? My understanding of typical benchmarks is that there are a lot of snitty details that need to be matched up in order to do a cost-performance comparison.
- wmf 6y ago
  https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/announcing-the-n2d-vm-family-based-on-amd https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/announcing-th... https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/hbv2series-vms-are-now-generally-available/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/hbv2series-vms-are... https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-new-amd-powered-compute-optimized-ec2-instances-c5a-c5ad/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-new-amd-powere... (no pricing)
  - tpetry 6y ago
    They do have rome cpus but not anyone is stating whether they use the ram encryption features.
    - wmf 6y ago
      I'm pretty skeptical of the threat model for (non-attested) memory encryption in public cloud; maybe there isn't one.
      - _msw_ 6y ago
        I'm curious about your thoughts on the threat model when a cloud provider is building and operating the silicon too, and they aren't exclusively procuring silicon from suppliers that are the likes of Intel and AMD. Is it a particular certification that would help you trust it? A third party audit? How does it compare to how you establish trust in AMD or Intel on their design, implementation, policy, and practices?
ksec 6y ago
I still dont understand how AMD could have a chip announced 18 months ago, shipped nearly 12 months ago, Announced by AWS 6 months ago and is still not available.
- wmf 6y ago
  Azure went GA with Rome in Feb and Google in April, so AWS is not that late. I wonder if supply is low. One disadvantage of AWS is that they're so large they can't GA anything in low quantities because it would run out immediately.
  - _msw_ 6y ago
    Disclosure: I work at Amazon on building cloud infrastructure. That is an insightful general observation, though my saying so should not be interpreted as any specific statement on this launch. :-) The bar on quality and scale is high. I don't see this as a disadvantage, though some customers may not recognize the value of experiences that we strive to make "invisible." You might not appreciate it until you have a bad experience somewhere else. Personally I think about it like ordering things on Amazon.com. I got really used to an experience where I almost always get something I ordered within a delivery date shown on the website. Since COVID-19, I've started ordering some things from other sites, and a couple advertised "ships tomorrow, 2 day shipping!" But really, ordering the item just turned into a third party drop ship, and the item came a week later than "advertised". No general complaints, given the global situation today, just a general observation about customer experiences, and how unconscious expectations grow over time.
    - _msw_ 6y ago
      Reading my comment again, I feel that I should add: not delivering on time makes us very anxious, because we don't want to deliver a bad customer experience that comes with being late. That's why when uncertainty is introduced in the system, delivery estimates sometimes get pushed out significantly, or an estimated date isn't provided at all. When we announced that C5a was in the works, without a date, it does leave you (the customer) wondering when it's going to arrive. Quite a lot has transpired since the announcement, and we are still working hard to deliver this as quickly and safely as we can.