#component of microprocessor system: processor

Think back 4 years ago in the tech industry. Microsoft's head of Windows development said that Windows 10 would be the last. Windows 10 was a service, and there would be incremental updates to it. Then Intel, the largest manufacturer of PC microprocessors, got some bad news. Intel microprocessors are threatened by two very nasty vulnerabilities. Specter and Meltdown were all over the news and the Internet. Microsoft and Intel were at odds as to how to handle the problem. Microsoft was going to patch it in software, Intel was going to handle it with micro-code on the CPU. There was a little bit of fighting between the two, and it really was never resolved. Fast forward to today. Specter and Meltdown are still a looming threat, and Windows 11 has premiered. I think Windows 11 is Microsoft's solution to Specter and Meltdown. It is likely the solution to other security threats as well.

As a technician I get a lot of questions, and the one I hear a lot of lately is "Is my computer capable of running Windows 11?" It's a complex question. Microsoft left a lot of people scratching their collective heads over this one.

Requirements

The Windows 11 page lists the system requirements as:

Processor - 1 GHz dual core or better 64-bit microprocessor or System on a Chip (SoC).

Memory - 4 GB RAM

Storage - 64 GB or larger storage device

System firmware - UEFI, Secure Boot capable

TPM - Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0

Graphics card - DirectX 12 compatible graphics / WDDM 2.x

Display - 9” or larger display with HD Resolution (720p)

Internet connection - Microsoft account and internet connectivity required for setup for Windows 11 Home.

Most of these specs are not a problem. If you are using a recent computer (2016 or newer with components from 2016) with Windows 10,  you have met these requirements. The problem is item #4 and #5, the TPM Module and Secure Boot. For Windows 11 to work you need a TPM and secure boot.

TPM stands for Trusted Platform Module. It is a security chip found in computers. It is used as an encryption system that can boost a computer's security.

Secure Boot is a technology that ensures the right software loads on your PC.  It ensures Windows or Linux are booted on a computer and not some malware. Malware as you can guess is bad. If it is loaded with the OS it can leave the system open to a plethora of attacks.

In theory this set of security measures should help protect the computer. It should also protect the speculative execution stack set from specter and meltdown.

So in all reality the Windows 11 requirements are all about security.

Great article that humanises the process of creating AI...and a stunning excerpt from that which shows us never to take companies at their word that their supply chains are free from slavery and child labour:

In 2016, Intel and global music icon Lady Gaga delivered a musical performance unlike any before at the Annual GRAMMY Awards ceremony.

In collaboration with Intel technologists and Lady Gaga’s creative team, specialized hardware powered by Intel® Xeon®, Intel® Core™ and Pentium® processors provided the requisite high performance to choreograph the lighting, audio and projection systems in perfect harmony with Lady Gaga.

Source: Newsroom

Here, Intel was appealing to the audience and millennials and creating awareness that Intel was much more than “Intel Inside”. However, it was with the “Intel Inside” campaign, that the company evolved from an an ingredient / unseen product to become a globally powerful brand. 

The original motivation for the campaign was the need for an umbrella brand for its constantly evolving product line. With new products being introduced every year or so, increasing competition / clones in the market and the ruling that chip labels with just numbers could not be trademarked, led to creation of an umbrella brand – Intel.

Some of the key success factors of the branding campaign were:

1. Co-marketing, Intel convinced manufacturers that their computers would have higher perceived value if they opted for co-marketing, as well as obviously getting the advertising dollars.

2. Performance based product: The underlying product was of good quality and reliable

3. It aimed to educate the users about the value of Intel microprocessors, without the technical jargon and bridged the gap between the technicality and the feeling / experience of using technology

4. Bridging the internal gap that exists between the engineering and marketing teams.

I found the use of co-marketing by an ingredient technology company to be very unique at that point of time. In the HBS case, Carter is quoted as “Because of the campaign, the microprocessor has come to be viewed as a very important component of the PC, which has probably kept us from getting squeezed on price and has allowed us to spend more on R&D than we otherwise could have. Our market segment share is definitely higher as a result. Also, the PC market would not have grown as quickly without the emergence and growth of PC magazines, which were fueled by Intel Inside advertising.

These companies leveraged their visibility to achieve individual promotion goals. Co-marketing has led to success of various other products as well, such as Volvo/ Lego, Uber/ Spotify, Redbull / Go Pro. Another interesting example of a non B2C company using this comes from Hubspot, founded by a fellow Sloanie.

“By working with AI chat bot foundry Chatfuel, it ran a successful promotion that introduced visitors to the versatility of B2B AI with a brilliantly interactive Chatfuel experience and one of HubSpot’s classic guides.”

Source: Bluleadz

A new type of computing chip could be a game-changer. That’s because its transistors are not made of silicon. Transistors are tiny electronic switches that together perform calculations. A new prototype uses carbon nanotubes. It is not yet as speedy or as small as the silicon devices found in today’s computers, phones and more. But these new computer chips may one day give rise to electronics that are faster and use less energy.

Researchers describe their advance in the August 29 Nature.

This is “a very important milestone in the development of this technology,” observes Qing Cao. He’s a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was not involved in the work.

The heart of every transistor is a semiconductor component. It’s usually made of silicon. This element can act like an electrical conductor. It also can act like an insulator. This lets a transistor have an “on” and an “off” state. When on, current flows through the semiconductor; when off, it doesn’t. And this on/off state is what encodes the 1s and 0s of digital computer data.

Max Shulaker is an electrical engineer. He works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “We used to get exponential gains in computing every single year,” he says. Computer engineers were able to do so by building smaller and faster silicon transistors. But now, he says, “performance gains have started to level off.” Silicon transistors can’t get much smaller and more efficient than they already are.

Carbon nanotubes, though, are almost as thin as an atom. And they ferry electricity well. As a result, they make better semiconductors than silicon. In principle, carbon nanotube processors could run three times faster than silicon ones. And they would consume about one-third as much energy as silicon processors, Shulaker says. But until now, carbon nanotubes have proved too finicky to use in complex computing systems.

Carbon computing

One issue comes when a network of carbon nanotubes is deposited onto a computer chip wafer. At that point, the tubes tend to bunch into lumps. This prevents the transistor from working. It’s “like trying to build a brick patio, with a giant boulder in the middle of it,” Shulaker says. His team solved that problem. They spread nanotubes on a chip. Then they used vibrations to gently shake unwanted bundles off the layer of nanotubes.

A new kind of computer chip (array of chips on the wafer pictured above) contains thousands of transistors made from carbon nanotubes, not silicon. The prototypes can't yet compete with silicon chips for size or speed. But carbon-nanotube-based computing promises to usher in a new era of electronics that are faster and more energy efficient. CREDIT: G. Hills et al/Nature 2019

The team also faced another problem. Each batch of carbon nanotubes contains about 0.01 percent metallic nanotubes. Metallic nanotubes can’t properly flip between conductive and insulating. So these tubes can muddle a transistor’s readout.

Shulaker and colleagues searched for a workaround. To perform different kinds of operations on bits of data, transistors can be configured in various ways. The researchers looked at how metallic nanotubes affected different configurations. They found that defective nanotubes affected the function of some configurations more than others. This is similar to the way a missing letter can make some words illegible, but leave others mostly readable. So the researchers carefully designed the circuitry of their microprocessor. They avoided configurations that were most confused by metallic-nanotube glitches.

“One of the biggest things that impressed me about this paper was the cleverness of that circuit design,” says Michael Arnold. He’s a materials scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was not involved in the work.

The resulting chip has more than 14,000 carbon-nanotube transistors. It executed a simple program to write the message, “Hello, world!” This is the first program that many newbie computer programmers learn to write.

The new chips are not yet ready to unseat silicon ones in modern electronics. Each carbon transistor is about a millionth of a meter across. Current silicon transistors are smaller. They are tens of billionths of a meter across. Each carbon-nanotube transistor in this prototype can flip on and off about a million times a second. Silicon transistors can flicker billions of times per second. That puts nanotube transistors on a par with silicon transistors of the 1980s.

Gallium nitride processor—next-generation technology for space exploration

A material known as gallium nitride (GaN), poised to become the next semiconductor for power electronics, could be also essential for various space applications. Yuji Zhao, an expert in electrical and computer engineering at Arizona State University (ASU), plans to develop the first-ever processor from gallium nitride, which could revolutionize future space exploration missions.

Gallium nitride is a semiconductor compound commonly used in light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The material has the ability to conduct electrons more than 1,000 times more efficiently than silicon. It outstrips silicon in speed, temperature, power handling and is expected to replace it when silicon-based devices will reach their limits.

Besides LEDs, GaN can be used in the production of semiconductor power devices as well as RF components. Now, Yuji Zhao aims to use this material to develop a high-temperature microprocessor for space applications. He received a three-year $750,000 grant from NASA's Hot Operating Temperature Technology (HOTTech) program for his project.

"This material can enable electronics system with greater efficiency, much reduced size and weight, and higher operation temperature, all of which are highly desirable for various space applications," Zhao told Astrowatch.net.

Damien Zammit

Recent Intel x86 processors implement a secret, powerful control mechanism that runs on a separate chip that no one is allowed to audit or examine. When these are eventually compromised, they'll expose all affected systems to nearly unkillable, undetectable rootkit attacks. I've made it my mission to open up this system and make free, open replacements, before it's too late.

The Intel Management Engine (ME) is a subsystem composed of a special 32-bit ARC microprocessor that's physically located inside the chipset. It is an extra general purpose computer running a firmware blob that is sold as a management system for big enterprise deployments.

When you purchase your system with a mainboard and Intel x86 CPU, you are also buying this hardware add-on: an extra computer that controls the main CPU. This extra computer runs completely out-of-band with the main x86 CPU meaning that it can function totally independently even when your main CPU is in a low power state like S3 (suspend).

On some chipsets, the firmware running on the ME implements a system called Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT). This is entirely transparent to the operating system, which means that this extra computer can do its job regardless of which operating system is installed and running on the main CPU.

The purpose of AMT is to provide a way to manage computers remotely (this is similar to an older system called "Intelligent Platform Management Interface" or IPMI, but more powerful). To achieve this task, the ME is capable of accessing any memory region without the main x86 CPU knowing about the existence of these accesses. It also runs a TCP/IP server on your network interface and packets entering and leaving your machine on certain ports bypass any firewall running on your system.

While AMT can be a great value-add, it has several troubling disadvantages. ME is classified by security researchers as "Ring -3". Rings of security can be defined as layers of security that affect particular parts of a system, with a smaller ring number corresponding to an area closer to the hardware. For example, Ring 3 threats are defined as security threats that manifest in “userspace” mode. Ring 0 threats occur in “kernel” level, Ring -1 threats occur in a “hypervisor” level, one level lower than the kernel, while Ring -2 threats occur in a special CPU mode called “SMM” mode. SMM stands for System-Management-Mode, a special mode that Intel CPUs can be put into that runs a separately defined chunk of code. If attackers can modify the SMM code and trigger the mode, they can get arbitrary execution of code on a CPU.

Although the ME firmware is cryptographically protected with RSA 2048, researchers have been able to exploit weaknesses in the ME firmware and take partial control of the ME on early models. This makes ME a huge security loophole, and it has been called a very powerful rootkit mechanism. Once a system is compromised by a rootkit, attackers can gain administration access and undetectably attack the computer.

On systems newer than the Core2 series, the ME cannot be disabled. Intel systems that are designed to have ME but lack ME firmware (or whose ME firmware is corrupted) will refuse to boot, or will shut-down shortly after booting.

There is no way for the x86 firmware or operating system to disable ME permanently. Intel keeps most details about ME absolutely secret. There is absolutely no way for the main CPU to tell if the ME on a system has been compromised, and no way to "heal" a compromised ME. There is also no way to know if malicious entities have been able to compromise ME and infect systems.

A large portion of ME's security model is "security through obscurity", a practice that many researchers view as the worst type of security. If ME's secrets are compromised (and they will eventually be compromised by either researchers or malicious entities), then the entire ME security model will crumble, exposing every recent Intel system to the worst rootkits imaginable.

Around 2013, we figured out some of the nitty-gritty details regarding how the ME firmware was packaged up into a blob. The ME firmware is verified by a secret boot ROM embedded in the chipset that first checks that the SHA256 checksum of the public key matches the one from the factory, and then verifies the RSA signature of the firmware payload by recalculating it and comparing to the stored signature. This means that there is no obvious way to bypass the signature checking, since the checking is done by code stored in a ROM buried in silicon, even though we have the public key and signature. However, there still might be an exploitable bug in the ROM bootloader.

We also discovered that the critical parts of the ME firmware are stored in a non-standard compressed format, which gets decompressed by a special hardware decompressor. My initial attempts to brute-force the decompression scheme failed miserably. Another group had better success and they have now completed a working decompression routine for all versions of ME up to but not including version 11. Kudos to them!

Our goal is to implement a completely libre software replacement for ME. When the implementation of such a security-critical component is available for scrutiny, it will be peer-reviewed and audited by persons around the world. This generally results in stronger security.

Our goal isn't to replace Intel's ME, but to provide a minimal libre alternative firmware for users who choose to use it. Unfortunately, since the firmware is protected by RSA 2048, we currently have no way to execute our own code on the ME hardware because it fails validation. We have no way to move forward, even if we wanted to.

This is scary. Most digital handcuffs are so easy to break that it's not an issue how to break it, more so an issue of the penalty one might face for actually breaking it. In this case, it is impossible to break unless you have a way to factorize semi-primes with approximately 600 decimal digits in a reasonable time. (At the time of writing this article, pretty much impossible in one human lifetime for anyone with the biggest supercomputer).

So in conclusion, Intel has so far stopped anyone from tinkering with ME firmware in practice, and there is no way to trust the code running on your ME because it's proprietary. So we are back to the days of the Sony Playstation, but for general purpose computers based on Intel x86. Matters only get worse now that Intel has squeezed a whole system into a chip, SoCs. We have no physical separation between the components that we can trust and the untrusted ME components, so we can't even cut them off the mainboard anymore.

Below is a highly simplified diagram describing how some of the older ME hardware fits into a system:

Personally, I would like if my ME only did the most basic task it was designed for, set up the bus clocks, and then shut off. This way, it would never be able to talk out of the network card with some of my personal data. I refer to the ME as the Damagement Engine, since it is a hardware add-on that damages your security.

“Silicon Valley” may soon be a misnomer.

Inside a new microprocessor, the transistors — tiny electronic switches that collectively perform computations — are made with carbon nanotubes, rather than silicon. By devising techniques to overcome the nanoscale defects that often undermine individual nanotube transistors (SN: 7/19/17), researchers have created the first computer chip that uses thousands of these switches to run programs.

The prototype, described in the Aug. 29 Nature, is not yet as speedy or as small as commercial silicon devices. But carbon nanotube computer chips may ultimately give rise to a new generation of faster, more energy-efficient electronics.

This is “a very important milestone in the development of this technology,” says Qing Cao, a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign not involved in the work.

The heart of every transistor is a semiconductor component, traditionally made of silicon, which can act either like an electrical conductor or an insulator. A transistor’s “on” and “off” states, where current is flowing through the semiconductor or not, encode the 1s and 0s of computer data (SN: 4/2/13). By building leaner, meaner silicon transistors, “we used to get exponential gains in computing every single year,” says Max Shulaker, an electrical engineer at MIT. But “now performance gains have started to level off,” he says. Silicon transistors can’t get much smaller and more efficient than they already are.

Because carbon nanotubes are almost atomically thin and ferry electricity so well, they make better semiconductors than silicon. In principle, carbon nanotube processors could run three times faster while consuming about one-third of the energy of their silicon predecessors, Shulaker says. But until now, carbon nanotubes have proved too finicky to construct complex computing systems.

One issue is that, when a network of carbon nanotubes is deposited onto a computer chip wafer, the tubes tend to bunch together in lumps that prevent the transistor from working. It’s “like trying to build a brick patio, with a giant boulder in the middle of it,” Shulaker says. His team solved that problem by spreading nanotubes on a chip, then using vibrations to gently shake unwanted bundles off the layer of nanotubes.

A new kind of computer chip (array of chips on the wafer pictured above) contains thousands of transistors made with carbon nanotubes, rather than silicon. Although the current prototypes can’t compete with silicon chips for size or speed yet, carbon nanotube-based computing promises to usher in a new era of even faster, more energy-efficient electronics. CREDIT: G. HILLS ET AL/NATURE 2019

Another problem the team faced is that each batch of semiconducting carbon nanotubes contains about 0.01 percent metallic nanotubes. Since metallic nanotubes can’t properly flip between conductive and insulating, these tubes can muddle a transistor’s readout.

In search of a work-around, Shulaker and colleagues analyzed how badly metallic nanotubes affected different transistor configurations, which perform different kinds of operations on bits of data (SN: 10/9/15). The researchers found that defective nanotubes affected the function of some transistor configurations more than others — similar to the way a missing letter can make some words illegible, but leave others mostly readable. So Shulaker and colleagues carefully designed the circuitry of their microprocessor to avoid transistor configurations that were most confused by metallic nanotube glitches.

“One of the biggest things that impressed me about this paper was the cleverness of that circuit design,” says Michael Arnold, a materials scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison not involved in the work.

With over 14,000 carbon nanotube transistors, the resulting microprocessor executed a simple program to write the message, “Hello, world!” — the first program that many newbie computer programmers learn to write.

The newly minted carbon nanotube microprocessor isn’t yet ready to unseat silicon chips as the mainstay of modern electronics. Each one is about a micrometer across, compared with current silicon transistors that are tens of nanometers across. And each carbon nanotube transistor in this prototype can flip on and off about a million times each second, whereas silicon transistors can flicker billions of times per second. That puts these nanotube transistors on par with silicon components produced in the 1980s.

A new type of computing chip could be a game-changer. That’s because its transistors are not made of silicon. Transistors are tiny electronic switches that together perform calculations. A new prototype uses carbon nanotubes. It is not yet as speedy or as small as the silicon devices found in today’s computers, phones and more. But these new computer chips may one day give rise to electronics that are faster and use less energy.

Researchers describe their advance in the August 29 Nature.

This is “a very important milestone in the development of this technology,” observes Qing Cao. He’s a materials scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was not involved in the work.

The heart of every transistor is a semiconductor component. It’s usually made of silicon. This element can act like an electrical conductor. It also can act like an insulator. This lets a transistor have an “on” and an “off” state. When on, current flows through the semiconductor; when off, it doesn’t. And this on/off state is what encodes the 1s and 0s of digital computer data.

Max Shulaker is an electrical engineer. He works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “We used to get exponential gains in computing every single year,” he says. Computer engineers were able to do so by building smaller and faster silicon transistors. But now, he says, “performance gains have started to level off.” Silicon transistors can’t get much smaller and more efficient than they already are.

Carbon nanotubes, though, are almost as thin as an atom. And they ferry electricity well. As a result, they make better semiconductors than silicon. In principle, carbon nanotube processors could run three times faster than silicon ones. And they would consume about one-third as much energy as silicon processors, Shulaker says. But until now, carbon nanotubes have proved too finicky to use in complex computing systems.

Carbon computing

One issue comes when a network of carbon nanotubes is deposited onto a computer chip wafer. At that point, the tubes tend to bunch into lumps. This prevents the transistor from working. It’s “like trying to build a brick patio, with a giant boulder in the middle of it,” Shulaker says. His team solved that problem. They spread nanotubes on a chip. Then they used vibrations to gently shake unwanted bundles off the layer of nanotubes.

A new kind of computer chip (array of chips on the wafer pictured above) contains thousands of transistors made from carbon nanotubes, not silicon. The prototypes can't yet compete with silicon chips for size or speed. But carbon-nanotube-based computing promises to usher in a new era of electronics that are faster and more energy efficient.   CREDITL G. Hills et al/Nature 2019

The team also faced another problem. Each batch of carbon nanotubes contains about 0.01 percent metallic nanotubes. Metallic nanotubes can’t properly flip between conductive and insulating. So these tubes can muddle a transistor’s readout.

Shulaker and colleagues searched for a workaround. To perform different kinds of operations on bits of data, transistors can be configured in various ways. The researchers looked at how metallic nanotubes affected different configurations. They found that defective nanotubes affected the function of some configurations more than others. This is similar to the way a missing letter can make some words illegible, but leave others mostly readable. So the researchers carefully designed the circuitry of their microprocessor. They avoided configurations that were most confused by metallic-nanotube glitches.

“One of the biggest things that impressed me about this paper was the cleverness of that circuit design,” says Michael Arnold. He’s a materials scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was not involved in the work.

The resulting chip has more than 14,000 carbon-nanotube transistors. It executed a simple program to write the message, “Hello, world!” This is the first program that many newbie computer programmers learn to write.

The new chips are not yet ready to unseat silicon ones in modern electronics. Each carbon transistor is about a millionth of a meter across. Current silicon transistors are smaller. They are tens of billionths of a meter across. Each carbon-nanotube transistor in this prototype can flip on and off about a million times a second. Silicon transistors can flicker billions of times per second. That puts nanotube transistors on a par with silicon transistors of the 1980s.