DailyDirt: Processors Without Borders...?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Now that everyone is a bit more concerned about software backdoors that the NSA might have installed everywhere, a nationalistic push towards "home-grown" hardware could pick up a little among various countries around the world. Designing custom processors and software from scratch isn't easy or cheap, but it avoids some of the angles of attack for a security break-in (though it doesn't prevent any of the social engineering tactics). Here are just a few links on processor designs that aren't coming from Intel or AMD.

• The Russian government is reportedly going to rely on computer processors made by Russian companies, instead of Intel or AMD. Three Russian companies are creating "Baikal" processors, based on ARM designs, but it's not exactly clear how much more secure the resulting computers will actually be. (ahem, software? ARM licensing?) [url]
• The Chinese supercomputer, Tianhe-2, holds the top spot as the most powerful computer, but it runs on Intel chips, not Loongson processors. China's Loongson processors might not replace Intel or AMD chips in the top supercomputers in the near future, but it could happen sooner than expected. [url]
• OpenSPARC is an open source processor design available for anyone to develop, but it's getting a little stale since the last T2 release in 2008. If you're really paranoid about security, using obscure hardware and software might be make things a bit harder for potential attackers... (did you seriously believe that?) [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: arm, backdoors, baikal processors, loongson, opensparc, processors, security by obscurity, supercomputers, tianhe-2, x86
Companies: amd, intel