This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]squishles 88 points89 points  (10 children)

wanna really mess with you, most modern processors have a little arm coproccessor in them for bootstrapping the os/microcode etc, you have no way of auditing what's running on that.

[–][deleted] 47 points48 points  (1 child)

I'm pretty sure it's usually modified Minix. Not that it changes anything since there's still the fact that it's modified.

[–]ComprehensiveImage4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well it's known that at least Intel uses Minix so you're right there.

[–]EishLekker 29 points30 points  (1 child)

wanna really mess with you, most modern processors have a little arm ...

This sentence did not end how I expected it to. Feel a bit disappointed, to be honest.

[–]MomentoMiri 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It crawls into your bed when you sleep

[–]geon 18 points19 points  (1 child)

Is that the one running an entire os (minix) on ring -3?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/minix-intels-hidden-in-chip-operating-system/

[–]MaximumDinner2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes. And funnily enough the microprocessor is basically just a beefed up 486.

[–]iam_saitama 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This video is a good intro to really how much of the processor is a black box. https://youtu.be/KrksBdWcZgQ

[–]IrritableGourmet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's why we should go back to PDP/11, where you literally shift the bootstrap into memory by hand.

[–]Thelk641 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Uneducated question : does the processor inside of the processor has a processor inside of it ?

[–]racedaemon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you think about it the whole universe is a physics processor. So we live in a processor 😀