<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/29/2018 9:55 AM, Florian Weimer
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:87efdcz1j7.fsf@mid.deneb.enyo.de">
<pre wrap="">* Henry Baker:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite" style="color: #000000;">
<pre wrap="">I wonder if the server chips Qualcomm developed were hopelessly
haunted by Spectre?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">I find that extremely unlikely. There is a point (regarding cost or
power efficiency) at which most customers would stop caring. The
whole zoo of issues is now largely perceived as a software problem
anyway.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Except Spectre is not really a software problem. Check the paper in
ACM Queue, <br>
"C Is Not a Low-level Language"
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479">https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479</a>), <br>
in which David Chisnall explains the rather large distance between
what the C<br>
programmers believe they are writing and what is actually executed.
Spectre<br>
is an attack on that interstitial layer, a layer that software does
not see with<br>
bugs that software can hardly fix.<br>
<br>
-- Christian Huitema<br>
<br>
<br>
</body>
</html>