4 ms·

> a free architecture that doesn't include that shit There is nothing stopping RISC-V SoC/CPU vendors from tacking it on.

smoldesu 5y ago
You're not wrong, but what's the motivation? With x86, backdoors and coprocessors were able to be added because both AMD and Intel were pretty much the only players in the ISA. Since they were effectively the only license-holders (and American multinational companies at that), the government had no problem forcing them to both add IME/PSP. With RISC-V, there is pretty much no such obligation. It's an open spec, there is no licensing fee and there isn't an obligation to add hardware susceptibilities. Chinese companies will (and are) manufacture chips like this at the lowest cost possible, likely eschewing any black-box m53s running Minix that you'd find on an American CPU. It also opens the possibility for more bespoke chip designs (as it's a modular ISA), and hopefully dividing the market between security-conscious products and consumer ones will stop all devices from being digitally wiretapped. It's all speculation right now, but it's highly unlikely that RISC-V will be pozzed in the same way x86 or even modern ARM clusters are. There's too much competition, too much money to be made, and too few incentives. Suffice to say, you're probably going to hear the three-letter agencies complaining about "unsafe Chinese chips" soon or something equally stupid.
- Godel_unicode 5y ago
  > ...the government had no problem forcing them to both add IME/PSP. This is a false narrative, these management engines were added because large (corporate) customers of the major CPU vendors asked for them. Enterprise IT shops love stuff like this, anything to help them tame the unruly beast of asset inventory and management. This is the same reason things like iLO and DRAC exist, and they have all of the same types of bugs for the same core reason. Not only does the government not want management engines, the ability to turn them off using HAP is courtesy of the US government (namely the NSA!) asking for a feature to disable it. The main problem here is that the truth is boring, and the conspiracy theory sounds much more interesting. https://www.csoonline.com/article/3220476/researchers-say-now-you-too-can-disable-intel-me-backdoor-thanks-to-the-nsa.html https://www.csoonline.com/article/3220476/researchers-say-no...
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Why are management engines not delegated to professional/enterprise machines only then? Seems like an awful lot of money to waste putting specialized hardware into every machine you ship if only a fraction of the users will actually ever take advantage of it.
    - supernovae 5y ago
      economy of scale. Cheaper by volume and priced on utilization. There was a time when HP sold servers that could be up to say, 8 cores but only two were on by default and you cloud license the rest. It was cheaper to shop the hardware and software gate it rather than limit it and have a process in the middle.
      - ndiddy 5y ago
        Why does Intel, a company known for its extensive price discrimination (see ECC memory support, hardware virtualization, FPU support in the 90s) still put ME in all of its consumer CPUs when it’s only useful for the enterprise market?
        gjsman-1000 5y ago
        Economy of scale. The ME isn't just a management tool but is also used to help initialize the CPU. No reason to write a whole custom way of doing that instead of reusing the same technology. Also, customer CPUs are often (due to binning) rebranded Enterprise CPUs that were rejected (or just not purchased) for whatever reason, or vice versa. Easier to build ME on them all and configure it later. Your ECC memory? It's something Intel just flips on or off depending on how they want to sell the chip - many Core i7s and i9s have it on-die but you can't use it. That's because it might be useful on a Xeon Platinum equivalent.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - p_l 5y ago
- klelatti 5y ago
  As others have pointed out the ISA has nothing to do with this. Intel could start building RISC-V CPUs with ME type technology tomorrow. Sure you're open to buy RISC-V CPUs from China but how are you going to be certain that they have no backdoors?
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    > As others have pointed out the ISA has nothing to do with this. Intel could start building RISC-V CPUs with ME type technology tomorrow. From a purely technical standpoint, I agree (and wouldn't put it past Intel either). My argument is that having an open ISA makes it easier for manufacturers to compete with each other, which in turn makes it harder for interested parties to pin down every CPU manufacturer and punch holes in their individual designs. > Sure you're open to buy RISC-V CPUs from China but how are you going to be certain that they have no backdoors? Pragmatically, you can't. My point though was more that open ISAs give us options to buy hardware that doesn't get designed domestically, which is the main enabler for companies like AMD, Intel and Apple, and moreover, the government. If one chip is confirmed to be vulnerable in some way, you'll have legitimate competitors to choose from.
    - klelatti 5y ago
      You're conflating so many different factors here: openness of architecture, diversity of design / manufacturing, market needs in different sectors etc - all of which influence what features are built into CPUs / SoCs. There seems to be a bit of a consistent thread running through lots of discussions that RISC-V because its 'open' magically solves all sorts of problems - it does have some advantages - but it doesn't solve these issues any more than Arm does (and Arm already has massive diversity of supply and billions of CPUs shipped without ME type issues).
- kube-system 5y ago
  The motivation for other manufacturers is exactly same as the motivation for AMD to do this. To make more money by controlling resale markets. RISC-V wouldn't change any of those dynamics.

smoldesu 5y ago

You're not wrong, but what's the motivation? With x86, backdoors and coprocessors were able to be added because both AMD and Intel were pretty much the only players in the ISA. Since they were effectively the only license-holders (and American multinational companies at that), the government had no problem forcing them to both add IME/PSP. With RISC-V, there is pretty much no such obligation. It's an open spec, there is no licensing fee and there isn't an obligation to add hardware susceptibilities. Chinese companies will (and are) manufacture chips like this at the lowest cost possible, likely eschewing any black-box m53s running Minix that you'd find on an American CPU. It also opens the possibility for more bespoke chip designs (as it's a modular ISA), and hopefully dividing the market between security-conscious products and consumer ones will stop all devices from being digitally wiretapped. It's all speculation right now, but it's highly unlikely that RISC-V will be pozzed in the same way x86 or even modern ARM clusters are. There's too much competition, too much money to be made, and too few incentives. Suffice to say, you're probably going to hear the three-letter agencies complaining about "unsafe Chinese chips" soon or something equally stupid.

Godel_unicode 5y ago
> ...the government had no problem forcing them to both add IME/PSP. This is a false narrative, these management engines were added because large (corporate) customers of the major CPU vendors asked for them. Enterprise IT shops love stuff like this, anything to help them tame the unruly beast of asset inventory and management. This is the same reason things like iLO and DRAC exist, and they have all of the same types of bugs for the same core reason. Not only does the government not want management engines, the ability to turn them off using HAP is courtesy of the US government (namely the NSA!) asking for a feature to disable it. The main problem here is that the truth is boring, and the conspiracy theory sounds much more interesting. https://www.csoonline.com/article/3220476/researchers-say-now-you-too-can-disable-intel-me-backdoor-thanks-to-the-nsa.html https://www.csoonline.com/article/3220476/researchers-say-no...
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Why are management engines not delegated to professional/enterprise machines only then? Seems like an awful lot of money to waste putting specialized hardware into every machine you ship if only a fraction of the users will actually ever take advantage of it.
  - supernovae 5y ago
    economy of scale. Cheaper by volume and priced on utilization. There was a time when HP sold servers that could be up to say, 8 cores but only two were on by default and you cloud license the rest. It was cheaper to shop the hardware and software gate it rather than limit it and have a process in the middle.
    - ndiddy 5y ago
      Why does Intel, a company known for its extensive price discrimination (see ECC memory support, hardware virtualization, FPU support in the 90s) still put ME in all of its consumer CPUs when it’s only useful for the enterprise market?
      - gjsman-1000 5y ago
        Economy of scale. The ME isn't just a management tool but is also used to help initialize the CPU. No reason to write a whole custom way of doing that instead of reusing the same technology. Also, customer CPUs are often (due to binning) rebranded Enterprise CPUs that were rejected (or just not purchased) for whatever reason, or vice versa. Easier to build ME on them all and configure it later. Your ECC memory? It's something Intel just flips on or off depending on how they want to sell the chip - many Core i7s and i9s have it on-die but you can't use it. That's because it might be useful on a Xeon Platinum equivalent.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - p_l 5y ago
klelatti 5y ago
As others have pointed out the ISA has nothing to do with this. Intel could start building RISC-V CPUs with ME type technology tomorrow. Sure you're open to buy RISC-V CPUs from China but how are you going to be certain that they have no backdoors?
- smoldesu 5y ago
  > As others have pointed out the ISA has nothing to do with this. Intel could start building RISC-V CPUs with ME type technology tomorrow. From a purely technical standpoint, I agree (and wouldn't put it past Intel either). My argument is that having an open ISA makes it easier for manufacturers to compete with each other, which in turn makes it harder for interested parties to pin down every CPU manufacturer and punch holes in their individual designs. > Sure you're open to buy RISC-V CPUs from China but how are you going to be certain that they have no backdoors? Pragmatically, you can't. My point though was more that open ISAs give us options to buy hardware that doesn't get designed domestically, which is the main enabler for companies like AMD, Intel and Apple, and moreover, the government. If one chip is confirmed to be vulnerable in some way, you'll have legitimate competitors to choose from.
  - klelatti 5y ago
    You're conflating so many different factors here: openness of architecture, diversity of design / manufacturing, market needs in different sectors etc - all of which influence what features are built into CPUs / SoCs. There seems to be a bit of a consistent thread running through lots of discussions that RISC-V because its 'open' magically solves all sorts of problems - it does have some advantages - but it doesn't solve these issues any more than Arm does (and Arm already has massive diversity of supply and billions of CPUs shipped without ME type issues).
kube-system 5y ago
The motivation for other manufacturers is exactly same as the motivation for AMD to do this. To make more money by controlling resale markets. RISC-V wouldn't change any of those dynamics.