Security implications aside, the ability to load custom microcode onto these chips could have fascinating implications for reverse engineering and understanding them better.
This reminds me of a decade-old utility called "Bulldozer Conditioner" that claimed to increase performance of certain AMD CPUs dramatically (and was verified by benchmarks), yet the author was extremely avoidant of the technical details of how it was accomplished --- AFAIK no one publicly RE'd and posted information on it that I could find, and I never got around to doing it either, but now I wonder if he had figured out how to modify and optimise(!) the microcode.
As an end user, I wonder how my cloud provider can prove to me that they installed AMD's fix and are not simply running a malicious version of the microcode on their CPU that claims to have the fix.
wrs ·13 days ago
Show replies
xmodem ·13 days ago
Show replies
userbinator ·13 days ago
Show replies
hedora ·13 days ago
Show replies
account42 ·12 days ago
"Vulnerability"
These restrictions should never have been in place in the first place.
Show replies