4 ms·
Newer CPUs use more and more "hacks" - out of order execution, caching, speculative execution, branch prediction, etc - to gain performance improvements. The fu
by sodality2 2y ago
Newer CPUs use more and more "hacks" - out of order execution, caching, speculative execution, branch prediction, etc - to gain performance improvements. The further back you go, the less vulnerable CPUs generally are to these (but possibly more vulnerable to other kinds of attacks).
- badgersnake 2y agoIndeed, my Apple Watch (series 3) has always been immune to all spectre type attacks, the CPU is too simple. It doesn’t do speculative execution at all.
- hinkley 2y agoI can’t imagine taking a cpu design class in this more cynical era. So much of the speed these days seems to come down to distilling smoke and mirrors into physical form.
- sodality2 2y agoOn the other hand, research into finding these vulnerabilities seems to be booming. Though presumably, so is the grey-hat market.
- School-Cotton 2y agoBut M1 is squarely a modern CPU. It uses all the techniques you mention (as does every high-performance CPU since the Pentium Pro era).
- sodality2 2y agoFor sure. But the further you go along, the _more_ of these tricks it uses and relies upon to improve performance. New vulnerabilities that are discovered are likely to take advantage of some feature on the spectrum of these “hacks”, from new to old. Because older “hacks” are well-known and studied, newly discovered vulnerabilities are more likely to target features in the newer end of that spectrum (AKA newer CPUs).
- IshKebab 2y agoDoes it have a Load Value Predictor?
- School-Cotton 2y agoI don't know.
- saagarjha 2y agoNo.