SEV (Secure Encrypted Virtualization, [1]) is a hugely interesting feature that will be available with Zen. Once it's mature and perfected, it would allow you to securely run a VM in the cloud that is protected against someone who controls the hypervisor. And you'd also be able to attest that indeed you're running in such a protected VM.<p>How do you protect against someone controlling the hypervisor? Read the paper. But the high level is to encrypt memory using keys that cannot leave the processor and are only available to a specific VM ASID (Address Space Identifier), assisted by a secure firmware similar to the Secure Enclave. Attestation uses an on-chip certificate signed by an AMD master key during fabrication.<p>There were some discussions on this on the linux-kernel mailing list [2]. As I understand it, the current generation of SEV is still somewhat leaky, but there's no fundamental reason why those leaks cannot be closed.<p>[1] <a href="http://amd-dev.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wordpress/media/2013/12/AMD_Memory_Encryption_Whitepaper_v7-Public.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://amd-dev.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wordpress/media/2013/...</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-doc@vger.kernel.org/msg02578.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-doc@vger.kernel.org/msg025...</a>
I've been recently reading reports from some of my banking friends (and actually chatted with some folks I know at AMD) because I'm curious about AMD's turnaround. Even just last year AMD looked to be in very dire straights, and are still operating at a loss.<p>However, they seem to have a strong technical pipeline and they have historically punched above their weight-class. Does it look like they are going to make it?
Not having a unified L3 cache is an interesting choice, I can see how it would significantly reduce the cost of the chip and considering many multi-threaded workloads are operating on separate chunks of data chances are it shouldn't incur a noticeable performance penalty (especially in virtualization workloads, I'm interested to see what their 32-core server chip ends up looking like).
The timeframe is slightly disappointing since I think a lot of people were expecting Q3/Q4 2016.<p>The architecture itself sounds pretty much like what everyone was expecting, a traditional fat and wide core. Their power management and foundry process will probably make the difference as to whether final performance is impressive or not, may also be the cause of the delay.
As someone who is fascinated by articles like this one, but doesn't have a background in CE/EE, any recommendations for literature/classes I could take so that I can better understand the topics being discussed?
I've been a big booster of AMD for a long time, but recently the performance/power is so much in Intel's favor that I've been forced to use Intel for my last couple of PCs. I hope Zen makes them competitive again.
The most important thing for me. Zen cores have the AMD equivalent of Intel AMT ? (I don't remember the name).<p>If it haves it, I would avoid it like a pest, and get an FX-8370 or 8350 to replace my now aging FX-4100. The last thing that I like to have on my computer is a hidden uncontrollable CPU doing things that could affect to my privacy.
I just wish AMD made drivers for Win 7 as well - then I could switch from 4-core 4790k/32GB to 8-core ZEN/64GB ECC and keep using all the Adobe video editing stuff.