Meltdown and Modern CPU Architecture
Published
This talk covers CPU architecture from the early days (Intel 4004) through modern designs (2018, Intel i7 and i9), with a view towards how the Meltdown and Spectre exploits were discovered. It covers virtual memory, process separation, cache issues, RAM details, pipelining and stalls, branch prediction, Moore’s law versus physics, and finally how Meltdown and Spectre are the consequence of many of these design decisions.
In the end I show the code for Meltdown along with a demo.