Re: "Meltdown" and "Spectre": Every modern processor has unfixable security flaws

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > > Does any of the processors in the M68K family support VM?

I wrote:
> >   http://gunkies.org/wiki/MC68010

> With TLB cache and all that? Pretty impressive :)

I am not sure about the 68010 and its separate MMU. But beginning with 68020
there surely was memory space separation per process and cache memory in the
CPU. Looking at
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000_series#Improvement_history
i'd say that the family participated in the development of those tricks
for microprocessors. (Mainframe is said to have invented many of the modern
stuff but failed to make it affordable.)


> I remember at the time to be pretty discouraging to see 8086 and ilk
> eating all the market.

Well, MC680X0 first fell victim to RISC CPUs like DEC Alpha, MIPS or SPARC.
Then x386 made possible ultra-low-cost Unix machines (not more than 5000 USD),
x486 drilled holes into the SPARCstation market, Pentium began to compete
with the faster RISC architectures, and Pentium II decided the race.
PowerPC and MIPS still offered some resistence, but the system prices of
fat x86 machines with GNU/Linux were at most half those of the cheapest
RISC based Unix workstations.


> > Man against hardware. Who will finally win ?

> Hardware.

The more we should enjoy our intermediate victories.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas