Trust Execution Technology and virtualization support

[Fardor]

The E8190, which I'm guessing will be cheaper than the E8200 will not have these features and I am wondering if they are even used by common PC users.

Also, exact release date of the E8000 series would be nice, if anyone knows.

Thanks.

 

[v8envy]

Trusted execution is marketing speak for noexecute bits. What this means is clever h4x0rs have a harder time running arbitrary code on your machine through exploiting buffer overrun bugs in various software. Of course these days buffer overruns are getting rarer and rarer, so it's not that big of a deal.

Virtualization support is a minor but useful feature. It means various virtualization products can run unmodified closed source OSes in guest mode. Not very useful if you're running say Linux VMs under windows, but a near must-have if you're planning to run Vista 64 as a guest on Linux.

In other words, you don't *NEED* either if you don't already know. But if the price difference is $5 or less, better to have it and not use it than not have it and find a use for it.

 

[CTho9305]

Trusted execution is marketing speak for noexecute bits. What this means is clever h4x0rs have a harder time running arbitrary code on your machine through exploiting buffer overrun bugs in various software. Of course these days buffer overruns are getting rarer and rarer, so it's not that big of a deal.

No it's not. Trusted Execution Technology is trusted computing. The basic idea is this: I have something I want to rent to you, but don't trust you not to steal it. With trusted computing, I can ask your computer what software (and drivers, etc) you're using, and verify that I can trust it (e.g. verify that you're using Vista and drivers that don't allow you to record the video you're currently playing), and I can be sure that you haven't gotten your computer to lie to me. It would also be useful if you were in an internet cafe: you could ask the computer what programs are running, and be sure that there is no key-logger running to steal your passwords. You could ensure that there isn't a malicious hypervisor on your computer. It basically puts something into the system that the end user (or any software on the system) can't control.

Many people who understand what's going on have concerns about this technology because there are risks - specifically, abuse of consumers (fair use rights, vendor lock-in, etc). In and of itself, the technology isn't really evil and it allows for some cool things (just like nuclear technology).

As far as I know, the technology isn't really being used today, but I think once it hits some critical market penetration, the MAFIAA and others will start using it.

 

[Fardor]

I guess if I didn't understand the two replies I don't need em then?
Thanks... for the answers that I'm too ignorant to understand 🙂

 

[jedisponge]

Trusted Execution Technology basically means there are ways to prevent your CPU from running programs that some people don't want to run.

e.g. in a very oversimplified example, if I were an adult and I didn't want my kids playing video games, I can tell the computer through a special program to not let the computer run them. In the real world, instead of video games, TET could stop something like a virus/hack that would execute, or run, a program that would steal the credit card number of all my customers.

 

[taltamir]

Trusted computing = big brother controls your computer. - THIS IS A BAD THING, ITS NOT A FEATURE.
http://www.againsttcpa.com/what-is-tcpa.html
Virtualization = Running windows virtual machine on a linux native os. (the other way around doesn't need it, dual boot also doesn't need it).

The first is a BAD thing, the second is not necessary for you (unless you want to run linux and then a windows virtual machine on top of it)... Doesn't it also add SSE4 btw? which can almost double performance on certain programs? (like video editing).

 

[VirtualLarry]

SSE4 isn't going to be out until Penryn.