[HN Gopher] Putting the "You" in CPU (2023)
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Putting the "You" in CPU (2023)
Author : vinhnx
Score : 90 points
Date : 2026-01-09 15:38 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (cpu.land)
(TXT) w3m dump (cpu.land)
| drob518 wrote:
| Great presentation.
| amelius wrote:
| Meanwhile, companies are taking the "You" out of the CPU so they
| can control your hardware and by indirection, you.
| high_na_euv wrote:
| How?
| immibis wrote:
| Secure boot etc. It's in every ARM device, including the
| management engines in x64 devices (which are ARM devices).
| high_na_euv wrote:
| Oh, I see.
|
| Fortunely there is still x86
| amelius wrote:
| There is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine
|
| Anyway, it will be maybe a few years until the
| governments will get the idea of enforcing their own
| management engines into our hardware :/
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| > _Oh, I see._
|
| No, you don't.
|
| Because of the SMI/ACPI/Intel Management Engine/AMD
| Secure Technology/UEFI, and optionally AMT-complex, where
| usually only parts of can be deactivated partially, but
| never all of it.
|
| It's actually more bad than the above mentioned ARM-
| stuff, which is misinformed(maybe because of raspberry
| piish broadcomisms, or locked down dumbphones), because
| on ARM, you either _can_ disable that stuff, or even can
| run your own instead.
|
| https://www.trustedfirmware.org/projects/op-tee/
|
| https://github.com/OP-TEE
|
| https://docs.kernel.org/next/tee/op-tee.html
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| You would need to go back to ~2005-era Intel x86 CPUs to
| have x86 without a backdoor baked into the silicon (as
| far as we know), like Pentium 4. The Core 2 / Q6600 / P35
| chipset already had an early version of it. Wikipedia
| says AMD added their equivalent, the Platform Security
| Processor, around 2013, so their best CPU from 2012 would
| be the FX-8350.
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| Great introduction to programming fundamentals as well.
|
| Being able to explain something this simply usually requires a
| very good understanding of the entire subject.
| napolux wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46574687
| lucasoshiro wrote:
| Since the first time that I saw this here in HN I've been sharing
| it with several people around me. This including CS students, CS
| professors and non-technical people who only asked "how does a
| computer work?". I only say "just type 'cpu.land' and read that".
| This is one of the best things that I've found here.
| Isamu wrote:
| I think this is a good overview for most people, this is probably
| what they want.
|
| For me personally I was surprised given the name that very little
| is about cpus and most of the material is in the operating
| system.
| archmaster wrote:
| I guess I gotta write one about CPUs now ;)
| Isamu wrote:
| No problem really, I think most people want to bootstrap
| quickly from the low level into the higher abstractions that
| they care about, few people want to stay down in the cpu
| itself.
| CagedCoder wrote:
| > The bottom of every page is padded so readers can maintain a
| consistent eyeline.
|
| God bless
| enricotr wrote:
| Very fine site!
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(page generated 2026-01-14 23:01 UTC)