By: dmcq (dmcq.delete@this.fano.co.uk), July 3, 2022 4:30 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Björn Ragnar Björnsson (bjorn.ragnar.delete@this.gmail.com) on July 2, 2022 6:44 pm wrote:
> Kester L (nobody.delete@this.nothing.com) on June 29, 2022 1:49 pm wrote:
> > https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3534854
> >
> >
> >
> > Your thoughts on this article? I was under the impression that a lot of the 80s attempts
> > at capability machines (or really, anything that wasn't trying to be a glorified PDP-11)
> > floundered because of performance and cost issues (i.e. the Intel i432).
> >
>
> Poul-Henning is probably a pretty clever guy. But lets get real, there is no
> free lunch. Object store? Eventually it's going to go to an array of bits on
> an array of RAM chips/modules (ie linear). There is simply no way to rub out
> that fact from the Universe. Sure, you can have capability or access rights
> associated with an address (and even as part of the address has been tried)
> or object but that entails extra bits, extra bits that might save some
> page-table levels but at the cost of memory bandwidth and memory efficiency.
>
> Which would benefit who? You? Well, it depends on what you're doing. Stacks
> of linked lists? Will they cost less to traverse than page-tables, will it
> take less time to get them on or off secondary storage? Overall I'm sceptical.
>
> Well then, what about security? What about it? Extraordinary claims require
> extraordinary evidence. How is any of this in and of it self going to defeat
> side channel attacks in the future? Oh, you were thinking more of curbing
> short-sighted programmers? Well, I defer to Knuth: "Structure is a state of
> mind, not a set of rules". I've seen the code that gets written in a
> "secure environment" and no, it's way less secure than what's produced
> by skilled knowledgeable programmers in a less secure language.
So your solution is more skilled programmers? We shouldn't have had seat belts put in cars, just spikes on the steering wheel so drivers become better. Seat belts don't save you if a lorry comes out of a side street and run over the car. Give us the good old days when you had drivers going around holding their door ajar so they could jump out of the car if they saw an accident about to happen.
> Kester L (nobody.delete@this.nothing.com) on June 29, 2022 1:49 pm wrote:
> > https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3534854
> >
> >
> > The linear address space as a concept is unsafe at any speed, and it badly needs mandatory CHERI
> > seat belts. But even better would be to get rid of linear address spaces entirely and go back to
> > the future, as successfully implemented in the Rational R1000 computer 30-plus years ago.
> >
> >
> > Your thoughts on this article? I was under the impression that a lot of the 80s attempts
> > at capability machines (or really, anything that wasn't trying to be a glorified PDP-11)
> > floundered because of performance and cost issues (i.e. the Intel i432).
> >
>
> Poul-Henning is probably a pretty clever guy. But lets get real, there is no
> free lunch. Object store? Eventually it's going to go to an array of bits on
> an array of RAM chips/modules (ie linear). There is simply no way to rub out
> that fact from the Universe. Sure, you can have capability or access rights
> associated with an address (and even as part of the address has been tried)
> or object but that entails extra bits, extra bits that might save some
> page-table levels but at the cost of memory bandwidth and memory efficiency.
>
> Which would benefit who? You? Well, it depends on what you're doing. Stacks
> of linked lists? Will they cost less to traverse than page-tables, will it
> take less time to get them on or off secondary storage? Overall I'm sceptical.
>
> Well then, what about security? What about it? Extraordinary claims require
> extraordinary evidence. How is any of this in and of it self going to defeat
> side channel attacks in the future? Oh, you were thinking more of curbing
> short-sighted programmers? Well, I defer to Knuth: "Structure is a state of
> mind, not a set of rules". I've seen the code that gets written in a
> "secure environment" and no, it's way less secure than what's produced
> by skilled knowledgeable programmers in a less secure language.
So your solution is more skilled programmers? We shouldn't have had seat belts put in cars, just spikes on the steering wheel so drivers become better. Seat belts don't save you if a lorry comes out of a side street and run over the car. Give us the good old days when you had drivers going around holding their door ajar so they could jump out of the car if they saw an accident about to happen.
