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Re: Meltdown / Spectre
From: |
Tobias Geerinckx-Rice |
Subject: |
Re: Meltdown / Spectre |
Date: |
Mon, 8 Jan 2018 22:51:00 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.5.0 |
Hej Marius,
[I see this is being CC'd to @libreboot.org. I'm answering only as a GNU
Guix user and contributor, and assume people who live and breathe this
stuff will find plenty of holes in my opinion. Which this is.]
Marius Bakke wrote on 08/01/18 at 19:26:
> In my opinion, CPU microcode falls under "non-functional data", as
> expressly permitted by the GNU FSDG.
I'm not sure how tongue-in-cheek this is, so I'm not sure how to
respond. I hope nobody on the Internet is wrong^Wseriously suggesting
that microcode or any other firmware isn't machine code and —
unfortunately for everyone everywhere — very (dis)functional indeed.
(Don't get me wrong: I wish it weren't so, or that there were some sort
of commonly-agreed-upon wink-nudge fiction that it wasn't. If there is,
then Debian isn't playing along: microcode blobs are ‘non-free’[0].)
I think the real and thornier question for GuixSD is: if the recent CPU
vulnerabilities require a microcode update to fully mitigate, then how
do we square not recommending proprietary globs like this in official
channels with giving users all knowledge required to decide for themselves?
> It is not required for the processor to function, it is merely *a
> posteriori* data that the CPU can use to fix erratic behaviour.
AIUI, at least on x86 CPUs, the microcode *is* a large and/or functional
part of the processor. I suspect that's the case for most sufficiently
modern (complex) chips, but it's not my field.
Kind regards,
T G-R
[0]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/11/msg00109.html,
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=microcode
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Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Chris Marusich, 2018/01/06
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Katherine Cox-Buday, 2018/01/08
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Marius Bakke, 2018/01/08
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre,
Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <=
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice, 2018/01/08
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Katherine Cox-Buday, 2018/01/09
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice, 2018/01/09
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Leo Famulari, 2018/01/10
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Katherine Cox-Buday, 2018/01/11
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Adonay Felipe Nogueira, 2018/01/11
Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Tobias Platen, 2018/01/10
Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Leo Famulari, 2018/01/10
Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Christopher Lemmer Webber, 2018/01/10
Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Kei Kebreau, 2018/01/10