For once I actually feel excited about processors again

  • AggressivelyPassive
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    1110 months ago

    x86 is increasingly a complexity monster. I’m pretty sure, a substantial part of the instructionset is hardly ever used by modern programs, yet Intel has to maintain them.

    And if you look at all the hardware security incidents, they all originated in attempts to squeeze the last drops of performance from an old architecture.

    • @dragontamer@lemmy.world
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      610 months ago

      You know that ARM and RISC-V are both subject to Specter attacks right? Any out-of-order processor (which is every modern CPU, not just x86) are subject to Specter.

      All CPUs perform speculative execution and branch prediction.