Re: “Meltdown” and “Spectre”: Every modern processor has unfixable security flaws
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On Fri, Jan 05, 2018 at 10:33:45AM -0600, Nicholas Geovanis wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 at 6:55 AM, <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
> > (mainframes of that time had at least VM, possibly
> > speculative prefetch).
>
> Is it correct to call branch prediction the same as speculative execution?
I'm far from a processor expert myself but yes, that sounds plausible: the
memory unit is prefeching stuff on the speculation that the branch will
go one way, to keep the pipeline full. When things go the other way...
> If so, then "yes" they had it, but I don't honestly know if that's correct.
> Pipeline rewinding was necessary on prediction failure, etc, similarly.
... this happens.
I guess that this, in combination with a cache, could be enough for the
kind of timing attacks demonstrated by Spectre. But I'm speculating myself
here :)
Cheers
- -- tomás
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