Intel's HTM and CET are both very exciting developments.<p>Now that both clang and Visual Studio have mainlined control flow integrity, it can be made fast using hardware.<p>It looks like CET matches the Microsoft implementation of CFI more (according to [1] they worked together on the feature), I'm sure it'd be useful for clang as well.<p>[1]. <a href="https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2016/06/09/intel-release-new-technology-specifications-protect-rop-attacks" rel="nofollow">https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2016/06/09/intel-rele...</a>
The article first describes context and then it goes into describing the idea:<p>> We can begin a (hardware) transaction just before a function return instruction, and end the transaction at its intended destination.<p>Interesting indeed!