Re: diodesign Re: apologist
"Apologist"? Not apologizing, just seeing how Intel got hooked on prefetch performance tuning and how that could have blinded them to the problem. I think every Intel slide deck I've seen since the mid-'80s has bragged about their lead in cache hit ratios. Redesigning the cores to hit the same performance levels without relying on prefetch tuning will be an expensive challenge, unless if they can find a way to segregate cache between apps via software.
"The security hole was introduced way after the 8086. Basically, Intel and others screwed up. They're trying to spin this away as a design side effect....." Hmmm, debatable. The hole was predicted by the original HP EPIC design team in the '90s, which is why the EPIC-based Itanium is immune. When Intel bought into EPIC as Itanium they intended that EPIC was going to be their future CPU design and would replace RISC and CISC, only AMD upset the applecart with the 2003 release of the cheaper Opteron CPU with 64-bit extensions to the 32-bit x86 design. In the scramble to get x86-64 CPUs out the door to compete it's not surprising that Intel missed a few points. For all we know, there may be other nasties still hidden in the x86-64 design.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
