AMD outlines future Opteron security features
OUR READERS WILL recall that AMD was one of the first to jump in bed with the Trusted Computing "Palladium" initiative when that kicked off some years ago.
And this morning we had the chance to talk to Geoffrey Strongin, AMD's platform security architect, who gave us some interesting information on what will happen in the future.
As a preamble, Strongin pointed out that AMD has not yet decided when to bring its Opteron security features to market, and as these are unannounced products, he wouldn't talk products, as you'd expect.
But he did say that AMD has publicly talked about the features as a technology, and much of the information hinges on Microsoft's next generation security features - which he couldn't talk about either.
He said that AMD's SEM (secure extension mode) takes advantage of X86 extensions it has developed, including features like memory isolation. SEM is AMD proprietary but there are interconnects between it and the Trusted Computing Group's other work.
Support for secure initialisation of machines requires the CPU, the chipset and the TPM (trusted platform module) to work in sync.
He said: "While there are several uses for the TPM, the true benefit is when there is a trusted operating system. I'm not in a position to comment on that OS"
