ULTRASPARC vs ARMv7 (Sun Netra T1 vs Orange PI ONE) from ONLY a security point of view

2020-05-18 Thread Глеб Рахмановский


Dear Riccardo, 
 
>MIPS is in a little better shape, but there too you need to resort to Little 
>Endian if you want something cheap as ARM.
 
Are all:
  https://www.openbsd.org/octeon.html
little endian?

According to:
https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/ppc64el/ch02s01.html.en

32bit MIPS (big-endian) mips MIPS Malta 4kc-malta
Cavium Octeon octeon

Not sure if OpenBSD supports anything like it?

What do you think about hardware security level of Octeon based routers?
Is there any difference between the oldest obsolete ER3 Light and newer models?

MIPS is mentioned as a very resistant to SPECTRE issues, the manufacturer lists 
even only a couple of affected CPUs:
https://www.mips.com/blog/mips-response-on-speculative-execution-and-side-channel-vulnerabilities/

But what about SoC models?

Discussion at:
https://community.ui.com/questions/Meltdown-and-Spectre-Exploits/a9caa545-96f3-404b-aff8-2cdc8836bfd0
concludes there are no SPECTRE issues with their router devices?
 


ULTRASPARC vs ARMv7 (Sun Netra T1 vs Orange PI ONE) from ONLY a security point of view

2020-05-18 Thread Михаил Попов


>MIPS is in a little better shape, but there too you need to resort to Little 
>Endian if you want something cheap as ARM.

Dear Riccardo, 

Are all:
https://www.openbsd.org/octeon.html
little endian?
According to:
https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/ppc64el/ch02s01.html.en
32bit MIPS (big-endian) mips MIPS Malta 4kc-malta
Cavium Octeon octeon
Not sure if OpenBSD supports anything like it?
What do you think about hardware security level of Octeon based routers?
Is there any difference between the oldest obsolete ER3 Light and newer models?
MIPS is mentioned as a very resistant to SPECTRE issues, the manufacturer lists 
even only a couple of affected CPUs:
https://www.mips.com/blog/mips-response-on-speculative-execution-and-side-channel-vulnerabilities/
But what about SoC models?
Discussion at:
https://community.ui.com/questions/Meltdown-and-Spectre-Exploits/a9caa545-96f3-404b-aff8-2cdc8836bfd0
concludes there are no SPECTRE issues with their router devices?


Re: ULTRASPARC vs ARMv7 (Sun Netra T1 vs Orange PI ONE) from ONLY a security point of view

2020-05-18 Thread Riccardo Mottola
Hi,


Глеб Рахмановский wrote:
>  
> Dear Gurus,
> Please let me know, are there any advantages of UltraSparc IIe over Cortex A7 
> AllWinner H3 for a secure communication host ignoring a factor of power 
> efficiency, size and loud noise?
> IMHO the only feature OpenBSD can benefit from UltraSparc is StackGhost ?
>

The comparison is a little far fetched.
I prefer the Big-Endian CPU of SPARC where sometimes just a 1-byte off
in a string or a badly aligned or initialized struct segfaults your
program: hapy debugging. Do that on ARM.
Also, you can fully load your Netra T1, yet connect via ssh, do some
work and just notice it is slower. Do the same on your PI or similar or
even (compared to the higher CPU performance) on laptop it cringes.

What would be lovable would be a cheap, modern, multi-core SPARC. You
could do that, but commercially nobody does it because it is a complex
architecture.
But there is the LEON, modern 32bit CPU for Aerospace and Russia also
has several iterations of the SPARC, dating back to the Elbrus. Of
course, for us "mortals" not available and not as cheap as an ARM.

MIPS is in a little better shape, but there too you need to resort to
Little Endian if you want something cheap as ARM.

Sad, but true... right now you have an ARM/i386/amd64 monoculture, but
it reflects in the cheap prices of the CPUs.

Riccardo



ULTRASPARC vs ARMv7 (Sun Netra T1 vs Orange PI ONE) from ONLY a security point of view

2020-05-14 Thread Глеб Рахмановский


 
Dear Gurus,
Please let me know, are there any advantages of UltraSparc IIe over Cortex A7 
AllWinner H3 for a secure communication host ignoring a factor of power 
efficiency, size and loud noise?
IMHO the only feature OpenBSD can benefit from UltraSparc is StackGhost ?