How Many Computers Are in Your Computer?

The cpu also has typically multiple independent CPUs to control things like power saving and turbo boost. Modern intel cpus have multiple 486-class CPUs, one for this, one for the ME, and one that vendors can use that has SMM access (which is as scary or more so than the ME). OpenPOWER is pretty neat because you can actually see what commercially relevant implementations of these firmwares look like https://github.com/open-power/occ A lot of NICs are also completely based on multiple…

> This matters because, if one is clever, it provides an escape hatch from system which is small, predictable, controllable, and secure, to one which could do anything. It’s hard enough to make a program do what it’s supposed to do without giving anyone in the world the ability to insert another program into your program, which can then interfere with or take over its host I take issue with the statement that TC means that something could "do anything"…