Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Meltdown

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

Good technical description of the recent security flaws in compter chips explaining why we haven't seen the end of them. Out-of-order instructions (such as a speculative calculation) "introduce an exploitable side channel if their operation depends on a secret value." The impact is permanent. "Hardware optimizations can change the state of microarchitectural elements... Both industry and the scientific community so far accepted this as a necessary evil for efficient computing… Meltdown changes the situation entirely."

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Mar 15, 2025 9:52 p.m.

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