Moore’s Law Crippled by Security Flaw
Posted January 4, 2018 by Sayers
Most of us working in Information Technology are aware of the Moore’s Law observation. A gross over-simplification would be to say the transistor density on an integrated circuit doubles about every two years (some quote 18 months), and as a result, performance increases by double in that same time-frame. Ironically, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, made this observation. I call this ironic due to a recent rumor that hit the press this morning concerning a vulnerability affecting nearly *all* Intel processors less than a decade old.
The Intel hardware-level flaw, in summary, could allow malicious programs access to otherwise protected areas of kernel memory and expose sensitive information (e.g. passwords). This vulnerability will require an OS-level overwrite to patch and could potentially hinder chip performance to the tune of a 30 percent negative impact. This has broad-sweeping implications, not the least of which is giving rival chipmakers a competitive edge, while effectively adding another year on to this Moore’s Law cycle for Intel.
For more info: https://meltdownattack.com/
