by Simha Sethumadhavan on Jun 2, 2017 | Tags: Architecture, Hardware, Policy, Security
What should vendors do when they discover that a hardware 0-day has been used to exploit systems built on their product? Some vulnerabilities may permit vendors to patch the vulnerability using microcode updates. For instance, a mitigation for the row hammer DRAM...
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by Simha Sethumadhavan on Jun 1, 2017 | Tags: Architecture, Hardware, Policy, Security
What should academics do if they come across a hardware 0-day attack? Obviously, disseminate. But before the vulnerability is made public, it is important to responsibly disclose the vulnerability to the vendor to give them a chance to fix it. If the vendor determines...
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by Simha Sethumadhavan on May 31, 2017 | Tags: Architecture, Hardware, Policy, Security
What should governments do when they discover a hardware 0-day? In the US, as a matter of policy, any vulnerability that is deemed to affect critical infrastructure is disclosed to the vendors by the government [VEP]. The government can hide vulnerabilities (and...
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by Simha Sethumadhavan on May 25, 2017 | Tags: Architecture, Hardware, Policy, Security
[Editor’s Note: This post is the first in a series of micro-blogs over four consecutive days.] 0-day security exploits are attacks that use vulnerabilities that are unknown to a vendor. They are referred to as 0-days because the vendor knows about them for zero...
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by Abhishek Bhattacharjee on May 22, 2017 | Tags: Systems, Virtual Memory
As computer architects, one of our key tasks is to propose abstractions that improve system programmability in a manner that stands the test of time. One such abstraction, that has been crucial to the success of computing, is the concept of virtual memory. In this...
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by Mark Silberstein on May 18, 2017 | Tags: Accelerators, Databases, Networking, Programmability, Specialization
In this blogpost I share what I learned at the Seventh Workshop on Multi-core and Rack-scale Systems (MaRS) co-located with the EuroSYS Conference on Computer Systems held in Belgrade in April. It is a small but vigorous interdisciplinary workshop that focuses on the...
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by Reetuparna Das on May 8, 2017 | Tags: Accelerators, Cache, Memory, Near Data Computing, Specialization
Computer designers have traditionally separated the role of storage and computation. Memories stored data. Processors computed them. Is this distinction necessary? A human brain doesn’t separate the two so distinctly, so why should a computer? Before I address this...
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by Suchakrapani Sharma on May 1, 2017 | Tags: Debugging, Performance
To a developer, debugging, profiling and tracing tools are akin to the tools that a craftsman carries in a belt on construction sites. In fact, constructing robust code is as important as observing how it behaves during actual execution on production hardware....
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by Jignesh Patel on Apr 26, 2017 | Tags: Databases, Shared-Nothing, Specialization
I’m not sure if I should be writing a blog for architects. As some of you know, my expertise is in database systems. In response to this blog, I’m likely to get flames from some of you informing me about how I have missed the boat in my observations. If that happens,...
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by T. N. Vijaykumar on Apr 17, 2017 | Tags: Conference
There are many significant issues with our review process which has both false-accepts (when papers that should be rejected are accepted) and false-rejects (when papers that should be accepted are rejected). I am not talking about borderline cases that require nuanced...
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