'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/

On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
<bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>
>https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/

Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
operating systems.

On 13/11/2023 17:32, John Larkin wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>
>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>
> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
> operating systems.

However, the problem here is with speculative execution and hardware
designed for optimum speed. Most systems had something similar by way of
vulnerability. You may not like the Intel architecture (and neither do
I) but it is still dominant today. ARM is bigger by volume now but not
by value.

Captain Zilog and Motorola have both fallen by the wayside...

If anything I suspect that OS's and particularly on the AI side of
things is going to get ever more human like including fallibility.

--
Martin Brown

John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath
>> failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip
>> instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during
>> that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>
>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>
> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
> operating systems.
>
>

Well, we can go back to banging rocks together anytime we like. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC /
Hobbs ElectroOptics Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

On Monday, November 13, 2023 at 12:33:33 PM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
> <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
> >
> >https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
> operating systems.

Sounds like some kind of sophisticated predictive caching scheme to minimize main memory latency. But just how dumb are the idiots at Intel if they cache security data that has nothing to do with the application. Since the microcontrol knows nothing about the application, they should have given the microcontrol a means of keeping segments of memory off limits to the caching, via the OS I'm guessing.

On 11/13/2023 19:32, John Larkin wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>
>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>
> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
> operating systems.
>

At least we can stay optimistic :-). Then what, ARM or Risc-V...
That at a time when power is still around, and IBM made it freely
license a couple of years ago.
The rest cannot even sort out their endianness nonsense.
I am not sure if anyone actually realizes how *wast* the bloat is.

======================================================
Dimiter Popoff, TGI http://www.tgi-sci.com
======================================================
http://www.flickr.com/photos/didi_tgi/

On 11/13/2023 11:47 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
> At least we can stay optimistic :-). Then what, ARM or Risc-V...
> That at a time when power is still around, and IBM made it freely
> license a couple of years ago.
> The rest cannot even sort out their endianness nonsense.
> I am not sure if anyone actually realizes how *wast* the bloat is.

Operating Systems, nowadays, do "too much" AND still cling to the
monolithic notion created in the 60's (which makes them buggier and
more insecure).

[Look at the many-billion-dollar Linux kernel and wonder why it
STILL has bugs!]

Sadly, one can't opt for pared-down versions of OS's -- it's pretty
much take-it-all-or-nothing.

OTOH, most developers wouldn't know where to start paring...

On a sunny day (Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:32:51 -0800) it happened John Larkin
<jl@997PotHill.com> wrote in <ebn4lidvt7bqf9al4dq2nooo4iqpv2ifgm@4ax.com>:

>On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
><bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about
>>faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>
>>https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>
>Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>operating systems.

Too many lawers
If those used their time on earth to design something better it would help.

On a sunny day (Mon, 13 Nov 2023 20:47:13 +0200) it happened Dimiter_Popoff
<dp@tgi-sci.com> wrote in <uitqvi$rjpc$1@dont-email.me>:

>On 11/13/2023 19:32, John Larkin wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
>> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about
>>> faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>>
>>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>>
>> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>> operating systems.
>>
>
>At least we can stay optimistic :-). Then what, ARM or Risc-V...
>That at a time when power is still around, and IBM made it freely
>license a couple of years ago.
>The rest cannot even sort out their endianness nonsense.
>I am not sure if anyone actually realizes how *wast* the bloat is.

I program Microchip PICs is asm.
Much can be done with a few lines of code.

When I look at Linux these days and do a
ps avx
I see 228 processes running...
All I am doing on the Rspberry Pi 4 8GB (ARM!!) is writing this text file and have Firefox running, but doing nothing now.
Talk about bloat.
And no idea what some of those processes do...
here some
My Usenet newsreader....
23196 pts/2 SNl 28:03 6 368 23007 6184 0.0 NewsFleX
that is one,
but then:
26133 pts/6 Sl+ 334:46 5882 603 1514124 462312 5.7 firefox-esr
26234 pts/6 Sl+ 1:33 96 603 475068 112272 1.3 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 1 -isForBrowser -prefsLen 1 -prefMapSize 238412 -jsInit 285636 -parentBuildID 20220811191823 -appdir /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser 26133 true tab
26296 pts/6 Sl+ 22:42 39 603 615780 136988 1.6 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 2 -isForBrowser -prefsLen 4967 -prefMapSize 238412 -jsInit 285636 -parentBuildID 20220811191823 -appdir /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser 26133 true tab
26342 ? I 0:00 0 0 0 0 0.0 [kworker/3:0-events]
26372 pts/6 Sl+ 225:02 87 603 811480 157948 1.9 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 3 -isForBrowser -prefsLen 5627 -prefMapSize 238412 -jsInit 285636 -parentBuildID 20220811191823 -appdir /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser 26133 true tab
26734 pts/6 Sl+ 0:00 0 603 167328 25136 0.3 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -parentBuildID 20220811191823 -prefsLen 5811 -prefMapSize 238412 -appdir /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser 26133 true rdd
27112 ? I 0:00 0 0 0 0 0.0 [kworker/2:2-mm_percpu_wq]
27276 ? I< 0:07 0 0 0 0 0.0 [kworker/1:1H-kblockd]
27371 ? I< 0:00 0 0 0 0 0.0 [kworker/0:1H]
27607 ? I 0:00 0 0 0 0 0.0 [kworker/3:1-events]
27628 ? I 0:00 0 0 0 0 0.0 [kworker/1:1-events_power_efficient]
27649 ? I 0:00 0 0 0 0 0.0 [kworker/u8:0-events_unbound]
27764 ? I< 0:00 0 0 0 0 0.0 [kworker/1:2H]
27770 ? I< 0:00 0 0 0 0 0.0 [kworker/3:1H]
27791 ? I 0:00 0 0 0 0 0.0 [kworker/1:3-mm_percpu_wq]
28129 pts/6 Sl+ 0:00 98 603 416648 70608 0.8 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 137 -isForBrowser -prefsLen 8918 -prefMapSize 238412 -jsInit 285636 -parentBuildID 20220811191823 -appdir /usr/lib/firefox-esr/browser 26133 true tab
28328
....

Security? By now EVERYBODY in the universe must know everything...
Hacking it would take a few minutes only.

On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 18:09:57 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

>John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
>> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath
>>> failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip
>>> instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during
>>> that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>>
>>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>>
>> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>> operating systems.
>>
>>
>
>Well, we can go back to banging rocks together anytime we like. ;)
>
>Cheers
>
>Phil Hobbs

Or put 1024 risc processors on a chip and manage them rationally.

On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 20:47:13 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
wrote:

>On 11/13/2023 19:32, John Larkin wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
>> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>>
>>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>>
>> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>> operating systems.
>>
>
>At least we can stay optimistic :-). Then what, ARM or Risc-V...
>That at a time when power is still around, and IBM made it freely
>license a couple of years ago.
>The rest cannot even sort out their endianness nonsense.
>I am not sure if anyone actually realizes how *wast* the bloat is.

Windows 11 is obvious proof.

On 11/14/2023 17:38, John Larkin wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 20:47:13 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 11/13/2023 19:32, John Larkin wrote:
>>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
>>> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>>>
>>>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>>>
>>> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>>> operating systems.
>>>
>>
>> At least we can stay optimistic :-). Then what, ARM or Risc-V...
>> That at a time when power is still around, and IBM made it freely
>> license a couple of years ago.
>> The rest cannot even sort out their endianness nonsense.
>> I am not sure if anyone actually realizes how *wast* the bloat is.
>
>
> Windows 11 is obvious proof.
>

I was offered it a few times on my windows 10 laptop (named tvset3...)
and so far I was allowed to decline. A neighbour came a few days ago
for help (I sometimes serve as IT to helpless neighbours) who had
clicked accept... His problem was they wanted to force him into
having a PIN number, the screen after that looked weird but
usable. I don't know how much of it can be brought back to "normal"
as one sees what normal is but judging by your outcry it must be
really bad. Eventually they will force us all into it I guess,
I can swallow that as I use it for reading pdf-s and browsing,
plus the occasional ltspice.

On 14/11/2023 15:36, John Larkin wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 18:09:57 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
> <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:
>
>> John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
>>> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath
>>>> failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip
>>>> instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during
>>>> that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>>>
>>>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>>>
>>> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>>> operating systems.

It isn't the x86's fault that consumer OS's are insecure it is the far
too much code running at high privilege levels required for gaming.

IBM's OS/2 was a pretty secure OS on the x86 for its day. Had it been
for 386 and above only then history might have been different. Making it
work on the legacy 286 was an incredibly stupid idea that let Win3 gain
the upper hand. Conflated with it was the launch of the PS/2 hardware
with its MCA bus made all the rival PC makers club together against IBM.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot with both barrels, reloading
and doing it again...

>> Well, we can go back to banging rocks together anytime we like. ;)

>
> Or put 1024 risc processors on a chip and manage them rationally.

The devil is *always* in the details. Only someone who has never worked
on highly parallel systems would suggest such a naive approach.

Once you go beyond 4 CPUs coordinating who has access to what and when
becomes ever more complicated. The most important task is invariably the
one that farms out work to the others so that they are all doing useful
work. It is quite easy to end up using more power to do less if you push
number of CPU cores too high. Particularly in problems where smart
pruning of the tree can eliminated large chunks of brute force work.

Graphics cards and CUDA already provide massively parallel CPUs for
tasks which are amenable to such treatment. AI and some scientific
computing can be done this way very efficiently.

--
Martin Brown

On 14/11/2023 15:38, John Larkin wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 20:47:13 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 11/13/2023 19:32, John Larkin wrote:
>>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
>>> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>>>
>>>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/

Too many US lawyers and no common sense.

>>> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>>> operating systems.
>>>
>>
>> At least we can stay optimistic :-). Then what, ARM or Risc-V...
>> That at a time when power is still around, and IBM made it freely
>> license a couple of years ago.
>> The rest cannot even sort out their endianness nonsense.
>> I am not sure if anyone actually realizes how *wast* the bloat is.
>
> Windows 11 is obvious proof.

Win11 isn't all that bad (Win8 was a dog's dinner). If you don't like it
then install Ubuntu or one of the other free Unix clones instead.

Then you really will have a secure OS on an x86 chip (provided that you
configure it correctly). The learning curve on Unix is a bit steep
though but it is useable out of the box. I'm running my copy as a guest
OS under Win11 Pro via VMWare because the MS virtualisation sucks.

I have finally had to install Ubuntu myself to gain access to exotic
software that is only available on Unix (and porting it to Windows would
be incredibly tedious and error prone which is why no-one ever has).

I'm quite impressed with it so far and Maxima is much more stable on the
Unix platform which is an unexpected bonus for me (likewise I suspect
for Latex too). I may yet make the change to becoming a Unix advocate.

In future there are some things that I will now do under Unix because it
works better there than on Windows rather than because there is no
equivalent on Windows (which is what motivated me to jump ship).

--
Martin Brown

onsdag den 15. november 2023 kl. 13.22.54 UTC+1 skrev Martin Brown:
> On 14/11/2023 15:38, John Larkin wrote:
> > On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 20:47:13 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <d...@tgi-sci.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> On 11/13/2023 19:32, John Larkin wrote:
> >>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
> >>> <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
> >>>>
> >>>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
> Too many US lawyers and no common sense.
> >>> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
> >>> operating systems.
> >>>
> >>
> >> At least we can stay optimistic :-). Then what, ARM or Risc-V...
> >> That at a time when power is still around, and IBM made it freely
> >> license a couple of years ago.
> >> The rest cannot even sort out their endianness nonsense.
> >> I am not sure if anyone actually realizes how *wast* the bloat is.
> >
> > Windows 11 is obvious proof.
> Win11 isn't all that bad (Win8 was a dog's dinner). If you don't like it
> then install Ubuntu or one of the other free Unix clones instead.
>
> Then you really will have a secure OS on an x86 chip (provided that you
> configure it correctly). The learning curve on Unix is a bit steep
> though but it is useable out of the box. I'm running my copy as a guest
> OS under Win11 Pro via VMWare because the MS virtualisation sucks.

what's wrong with WSL/WLS2 ?

win11 even comes with an X server out of the box so everything just works

On Wed, 15 Nov 2023 11:57:48 +0000, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

>On 14/11/2023 15:36, John Larkin wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 18:09:57 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
>> <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:
>>
>>> John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
>>>> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath
>>>>> failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip
>>>>> instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during
>>>>> that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>>>>
>>>> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>>>> operating systems.
>
>It isn't the x86's fault that consumer OS's are insecure it is the far
>too much code running at high privilege levels required for gaming.
>
>IBM's OS/2 was a pretty secure OS on the x86 for its day. Had it been
>for 386 and above only then history might have been different. Making it
>work on the legacy 286 was an incredibly stupid idea that let Win3 gain
>the upper hand. Conflated with it was the launch of the PS/2 hardware
>with its MCA bus made all the rival PC makers club together against IBM.
>
>Talk about shooting yourself in the foot with both barrels, reloading
>and doing it again...
>
>>> Well, we can go back to banging rocks together anytime we like. ;)
>
>>
>> Or put 1024 risc processors on a chip and manage them rationally.
>
>The devil is *always* in the details. Only someone who has never worked
>on highly parallel systems would suggest such a naive approach.

Absolute hardware protection isn't naive. It's not even hard. But
you've got to want to do it.

Why do you always revert to insults, and not make rational cases for
your opinions? Most people do that, because lame insults are much
easier than thinking.

>
>Once you go beyond 4 CPUs coordinating who has access to what and when
>becomes ever more complicated. The most important task is invariably the
>one that farms out work to the others so that they are all doing useful
>work. It is quite easy to end up using more power to do less if you push
>number of CPU cores too high. Particularly in problems where smart
>pruning of the tree can eliminated large chunks of brute force work.
>
>Graphics cards and CUDA already provide massively parallel CPUs for
>tasks which are amenable to such treatment. AI and some scientific
>computing can be done this way very efficiently.

That doesn't make the OS any more secure. All that hung-on hardware
just creates more opportunities for hacks.

On 11/15/2023 4:57 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
> Once you go beyond 4 CPUs coordinating who has access to what and when becomes
> ever more complicated.

But that's really more of a case with SMP -- there is strong temptation
to "impurely" share things that really *shouldn't* be shared. All, of
course, in the name of "performance".

Decoupling processors is much like decoupling processes -- you
want to *minimize* interactions (doing otherwise is usually a
very bad smell!)

> The most important task is invariably the one that farms
> out work to the others so that they are all doing useful work.

Yes. And, the "shorter" the tasks, the tougher this becomes
as it's NP-Hard to sort out how "best" to do so.

OTOH, for long-running processes, there are more opportunities
for tuning -- if moving a process is relatively inexpensive
(as it would be on SMP)

> It is quite easy
> to end up using more power to do less if you push number of CPU cores too high.

I run multiple 4-core devices, loosely coupled. Trying to keep every
core maximally used -- in light of a dynamic workload -- is costly
(time and space). In my case, I can dedicate cores to specific
high-overhead tasks (like keeping the network saturated) to
make use of those resources. And, can migrate (long-running)
tasks between nodes (and, thus, cores) to balance the workload
system-wide.

*AND*, make a note of what I've done, "successfully", so the next
time the opportunity arises, I can adopt this configuration without
having to rehash the same analysis!

OTOH, cores are inexpensive so why the obsession with performance
(often at the expense of reliability, security, maintainability, etc.)?

[*Billions* of dollars maintaining Linux... based on a 50 year-old
OS's notion of how an OS should be designed and the services that
it should present. Really? No one has learned anything in all these
decades? Is keeping old code running worth that much to FUTURE
code?]

> Particularly in problems where smart pruning of the tree can eliminated large
> chunks of brute force work.

A real problem is having a scheme for the run-time tracking of dependencies
between tasks. E.g., if X dies (or is killed off), what other processes
are no "made redundant" due to its unavailability? Likewise, how much
other cruft can you discard *if* you choose to kill off X?

Sadly, most schedulers and workload managers only look at a naive
"priority" to make their decisions and, if lucky, later *react*
to other processes that fail to make progress.

> Graphics cards and CUDA already provide massively parallel CPUs for tasks which
> are amenable to such treatment. AI and some scientific computing can be done
> this way very efficiently.

But those are usually truly parallel operations; you don't try to
run different processes on each of those processors.

On Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 7:37:37 AM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 18:09:57 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
> <pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
>
> >John Larkin <j...@997PotHill.com> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
> >> <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

> >> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
> >> operating systems.

> >Well, we can go back to banging rocks together anytime we like. ;)

> Or put 1024 risc processors on a chip and manage them rationally.

We cannot rationally manage a congress of a few hundred when they're
humans, why do you expect we can handle intercommunicating
'risc processors' either? The experience with humans is
well documented, hasn't changed much since

<https://archive.org/details/mackay-popular-delusions>

So, to the idea of rationally managing 1024 risk processors, I will add
"Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those..."

On 14/11/2023 16:09, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
> On 11/14/2023 17:38, John Larkin wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 20:47:13 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/13/2023 19:32, John Larkin wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
>>>> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86
>>>>> goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty
>>>>> chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability,
>>>>> and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>>>>
>>>> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>>>> operating systems.
>>>>
>>>
>>> At least we can stay optimistic :-). Then what, ARM or Risc-V...
>>> That at a time when power is still around, and IBM made it freely
>>> license a couple of years ago.
>>> The rest cannot even sort out their endianness nonsense.
>>> I am not sure if anyone actually realizes how *wast* the bloat is.
>>
>> Windows 11 is obvious proof.
>
> I was offered it a few times on my windows 10 laptop (named tvset3...)
> and so far I was allowed to decline. A neighbour came a few days ago
> for help (I sometimes serve as IT to helpless neighbours) who had
> clicked accept... His problem was they wanted to force him into
> having a PIN number, the screen after that looked weird but
> usable. I don't know how much of it can be brought back to "normal"
> as one sees what normal is but judging by your outcry it must be
> really bad. Eventually they will force us all into it I guess,
> I can swallow that as I use it for reading pdf-s and browsing,
> plus the occasional ltspice.

The only gotcha I can see is that every version requires more ram and
occupies more disk space but both are cheap and fast today.

Win10 is going officially unsupported sometime soon in 2025. I expect it
will get a reprieve or there will be a global malware catastrophe.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-windows-10-is-a-security-disaster-waiting-to-happen/

Win11 main advantage for me is that it understands performance cores on
the more recent Intel CPUs. That is a kludge in Win10.

The last truly dreadful edition of windows was Win8.
Think Picasso on a bad acid trip and you will not be too far off.

--
Martin Brown

On 11/15/2023 5:22 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
> Then you really will have a secure OS on an x86 chip (provided that you
> configure it correctly). The learning curve on Unix is a bit steep though but
> it is useable out of the box. I'm running my copy as a guest OS under Win11 Pro
> via VMWare because the MS virtualisation sucks.

The biggest part of the "UN*X mindset" is the notion that you *build* tools
(functionality) by stringing together EXISTING tools -- instead of the
MS mindset where every tool that you *think* the user might need while
using your app has to be PART of your app!

This requires familiarity with more small tools -- instead of lots of
detail about big tools that each try to offer some similar "small
function" within.

> I have finally had to install Ubuntu myself to gain access to exotic software
> that is only available on Unix (and porting it to Windows would be incredibly
> tedious and error prone which is why no-one ever has).

Why have you (presumably) avoided it? Most Eunices install a lot easier
(and quicker!) than Windows. The only tough part is if you want to offer
specific network services on a host (name, file transfer, SMB, packet
filtering, etc.). There, the UIs tend to be pretty archaic (read:
non-GUI) and often cryptic. Best not tackled by newbies.

> I'm quite impressed with it so far and Maxima is much more stable on the Unix
> platform which is an unexpected bonus for me (likewise I suspect for Latex
> too). I may yet make the change to becoming a Unix advocate.
>
> In future there are some things that I will now do under Unix because it works
> better there than on Windows rather than because there is no equivalent on
> Windows (which is what motivated me to jump ship).

My approach has sort of been the opposite: using UN*X for the
important things and Windows for those things that are more
"window dressing" (documentation, CAD/EDA, multimedia, etc.).
I've not used a Windows-based toolchain for ages (since VC1.0!)

On 11/15/2023 11:16 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
> The only gotcha I can see is that every version requires more ram and occupies
> more disk space but both are cheap and fast today.

Save for a generation of machines with 8GB *hardware* memory limits...

OTOH, I can run a *BSD box with *megabytes* of RAM if I am willing
to live witht he thrashing (which, unlike windows machines,
won't take the machine to its knees)

On Wed, 15 Nov 2023 09:39:05 -0800 (PST), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 7:37:37?AM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:
>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 18:09:57 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
>> <pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
>>
>> >John Larkin <j...@997PotHill.com> wrote:
>> >> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
>> >> <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> >> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>> >> operating systems.
>
>> >Well, we can go back to banging rocks together anytime we like. ;)
>
>> Or put 1024 risc processors on a chip and manage them rationally.
>
>We cannot rationally manage a congress of a few hundred when they're
>humans, why do you expect we can handle intercommunicating
>'risc processors' either? The experience with humans is
>well documented, hasn't changed much since
>
><https://archive.org/details/mackay-popular-delusions>
>
>So, to the idea of rationally managing 1024 risk processors, I will add
>"Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those..."

It makes sense, if you think and give it a chance. Don't apply the
current big-OS multiprocessor multithread paradigm.

One CPU is the master manager.

Some CPUs are dedicated to be services, like device drivers, file
handlers, internet interfaces, user interfaces.

Then some CPUs run applications. Some have lots of power, including
floating point, some are dinky. Probably two catagories.

Every CPU has its own small ram, cache, and an access mechanism to
main external DRAMs. Every CPU has absolute hardware protection.
Violate the rules and die.

The limit on a multicore chip will be thermal.

CPUs used to be a rare, expensive resource. We have plenty of compute
power now. Let's use it for reliability.

Not that current OS's are resource efficient. DOS on an 8088 did some
things faster than my new monster with 20K times the resources.

On Wed, 15 Nov 2023 18:16:42 +0000, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

>On 14/11/2023 16:09, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
>> On 11/14/2023 17:38, John Larkin wrote:
>>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 20:47:13 +0200, Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 11/13/2023 19:32, John Larkin wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
>>>>> <bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86
>>>>>> goliath failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty
>>>>>> chip instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability,
>>>>>> and during that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
>>>>>
>>>>> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>>>>> operating systems.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> At least we can stay optimistic :-). Then what, ARM or Risc-V...
>>>> That at a time when power is still around, and IBM made it freely
>>>> license a couple of years ago.
>>>> The rest cannot even sort out their endianness nonsense.
>>>> I am not sure if anyone actually realizes how *wast* the bloat is.
>>>
>>> Windows 11 is obvious proof.
>>
>> I was offered it a few times on my windows 10 laptop (named tvset3...)
>> and so far I was allowed to decline. A neighbour came a few days ago
>> for help (I sometimes serve as IT to helpless neighbours) who had
>> clicked accept... His problem was they wanted to force him into
>> having a PIN number, the screen after that looked weird but
>> usable. I don't know how much of it can be brought back to "normal"
>> as one sees what normal is but judging by your outcry it must be
>> really bad. Eventually they will force us all into it I guess,
>> I can swallow that as I use it for reading pdf-s and browsing,
>> plus the occasional ltspice.
>
>The only gotcha I can see is that every version requires more ram and
>occupies more disk space but both are cheap and fast today.
>
>Win10 is going officially unsupported sometime soon in 2025. I expect it
>will get a reprieve or there will be a global malware catastrophe.
>
>https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-windows-10-is-a-security-disaster-waiting-to-happen/
>
>Win11 main advantage for me is that it understands performance cores on
>the more recent Intel CPUs. That is a kludge in Win10.
>
>The last truly dreadful edition of windows was Win8.
>Think Picasso on a bad acid trip and you will not be too far off.

I miss Win7, but most of the machines have died.

Win11 got terrible user reviews, but update 23H2 fixed a lot of
stupidities. It's almost tolerable, after a lot of tweaks.

It runs Firefox, LT Spice, PADS, VLC, Crimson, Agent, Irfanview, and a
bunch of my old compiled PowerBasic programs. And seems reliable so
far.

On Thursday, November 16, 2023 at 2:49:13 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Nov 2023 11:57:48 +0000, Martin Brown
> <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >On 14/11/2023 15:36, John Larkin wrote:
> >> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 18:09:57 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
> >> <pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> John Larkin <j...@997PotHill.com> wrote:
> >>>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
> >>>> <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> 'Intel has been sued by a handful of PC buyers who claim the x86 goliath
> >>>>> failed to act when informed five years ago about faulty chip
> >>>>> instructions that allowed the recent Downfall vulnerability, and during
> >>>>> that period sold billions of insecure chips.'
> >>>>>
> >>>>> https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/intel_downfall_lawsuit/
> >>>>
> >>>> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
> >>>> operating systems.
> >
> >It isn't the x86's fault that consumer OS's are insecure it is the far
> >too much code running at high privilege levels required for gaming.
> >
> >IBM's OS/2 was a pretty secure OS on the x86 for its day. Had it been
> >for 386 and above only then history might have been different. Making it
> >work on the legacy 286 was an incredibly stupid idea that let Win3 gain
> >the upper hand. Conflated with it was the launch of the PS/2 hardware
> >with its MCA bus made all the rival PC makers club together against IBM.
> >
> >Talk about shooting yourself in the foot with both barrels, reloading
> >and doing it again...
> >
> >>> Well, we can go back to banging rocks together anytime we like. ;)
> >
> >>
> >> Or put 1024 risc processors on a chip and manage them rationally.
> >
> >The devil is *always* in the details. Only someone who has never worked
> >on highly parallel systems would suggest such a naive approach.
>
> Absolute hardware protection isn't naive. It's not even hard. But
> you've got to want to do it.
>
> Why do you always revert to insults, and not make rational cases for your opinions?

He did, but you post4ed your response above it.

> Most people do that, because lame insults are much easier than thinking.

You are exhibiting exactly that behavior.

> >Once you go beyond 4 CPUs coordinating who has access to what and when
> >becomes ever more complicated. The most important task is invariably the
> >one that farms out work to the others so that they are all doing useful
> >work. It is quite easy to end up using more power to do less if you push
> >number of CPU cores too high. Particularly in problems where smart
> >pruning of the tree can eliminated large chunks of brute force work.
> >
> >Graphics cards and CUDA already provide massively parallel CPUs for
> >tasks which are amenable to such treatment. AI and some scientific
> >computing can be done this way very efficiently.
>
> That doesn't make the OS any more secure. All that hung-on hardware just creates more opportunities for hacks.\\

If it isn't designed carefully.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

On a sunny day (Wed, 15 Nov 2023 13:48:30 -0800) it happened john larkin
<jl@650pot.com> wrote in <48eali9c9lp841616piphv6jc2tp16rpuj@4ax.com>:

>On Wed, 15 Nov 2023 09:39:05 -0800 (PST), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 7:37:37?AM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:
>>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 18:09:57 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
>>> <pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> >John Larkin <j...@997PotHill.com> wrote:
>>> >> On Mon, 13 Nov 2023 09:08:34 -0800 (PST), Fred Bloggs
>>> >> <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> >> Some day we will be free of x86 and freed from bloated insecure
>>> >> operating systems.
>>
>>> >Well, we can go back to banging rocks together anytime we like. ;)
>>
>>> Or put 1024 risc processors on a chip and manage them rationally.
>>
>>We cannot rationally manage a congress of a few hundred when they're
>>humans, why do you expect we can handle intercommunicating
>>'risc processors' either? The experience with humans is
>>well documented, hasn't changed much since
>>
>><https://archive.org/details/mackay-popular-delusions>
>>
>>So, to the idea of rationally managing 1024 risk processors, I will add
>>"Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those..."
>
>It makes sense, if you think and give it a chance. Don't apply the
>current big-OS multiprocessor multithread paradigm.
>
>One CPU is the master manager.
>
>Some CPUs are dedicated to be services, like device drivers, file
>handlers, internet interfaces, user interfaces.
>
>Then some CPUs run applications. Some have lots of power, including
>floating point, some are dinky. Probably two catagories.
>
>Every CPU has its own small ram, cache, and an access mechanism to
>main external DRAMs. Every CPU has absolute hardware protection.
>Violate the rules and die.
>
>The limit on a multicore chip will be thermal.
>
>CPUs used to be a rare, expensive resource. We have plenty of compute
>power now. Let's use it for reliability.
>
>Not that current OS's are resource efficient. DOS on an 8088 did some
>things faster than my new monster with 20K times the resources.

I have several Microchip PIC powered small boxes connected
to the 'main' computer (a Raspberry Pi4 4 GB with 4 TB harddisk now) via serial or Ethernet,
and some Chinese boxes (security camera system that has its own processor, GPS receiver, etc) too,
also data from other Raspberries doing things.
If any fails, only that specific input is affected, and error reports will appear.
or the main computer will even talk to you (like now for the gas sensor) if something is wrong.
It makes the load on the 'main' computer minimal.
So this is basically a multi-processor system that can be extended in a big way.
No silly task interrupts needed to handle all those processes,
all handled on the spot, PICs are a few dollars.