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Could a case be made against using x86 based on it’s fragility from a security perspective? I imagine since ARM is not fully closed (EDIT: ARM is not oss) they
by pm90 5y ago
Could a case be made against using x86 based on it’s fragility from a security perspective? I imagine since ARM is not fully closed (EDIT: ARM is not oss) they don’t have this problem, although I suppose there’s nothing stopping Apple from “extending” the design by adding extra op codes is there? (genuine question).
- ihusasmiiu 5y agoARM is OSS?
- smoldesu 5y agoARM is commercial, but yes, there is nothing that stops Apple from modifying the base ARM spec (and afaik they already have).
- invokestatic 5y agoYour last point is why I don't really see the hype over RISC-V from an end-user perspective. Companies manufacturing RISC-V processors are free to add whatever private extensions (or backdoors) they want. And unlike software, you can't easily reverse engineer it to discover them.
- jogu 5y agoRISC-V certainly doesn’t prevent this kind of thing but it does at least provide the opportunity for this kind of behavior to be challenged. Given anyone is free to manufacture a RISC-V processor it’s at least feasible another company could step in and provide a product that doesn’t do these things if that’s what the market demands.