Re:Google: Software is never going to be able to fix Spectre...
by amluto on Sunday February 24, 2019 @12:17AM
(#19237261)
Yes, but it wouldn't help enough. For example, a speculative load from one core can observably evict or change the state of a cacheline on another core.
Re:Google: Software is never going to be able to fix Spectre...
by lallysingh on Sunday February 24, 2019 @12:26AM
(#19237286)
That seems to require a much more sophisticated attack. Also my point is that a speculative cache would be a separate (like a peer to L1) cache, only showing its side effects in L2/3. That'd be a bit harder to crack with the shared core noise and larger size.
Re:Google: Software is never going to be able to fix Spectre...
by simcop2387 on Sunday February 24, 2019 @01:08AM
(#19237380)
The problem with that is, what happens when your speculative code changed values in that region of memory that another core just wrote to. who wins? and how do you do it without now violating a bunch of other problems where one core sets up a memory fence and other things like that. It ends up incredibly complicated to decide what to do with the result that it's probably not worth the extra work.
Re:Google: Software is never going to be able to fix Spectre...
by lallysingh on Monday February 25, 2019 @06:45AM
(#19244907)
Why not ask the folks who did TSX?
This would keep the L1 clean, at least