Transmeta chips to support 'NX'

Published 18 May 04 09:59 AM

It' 9:55AM and I'm sitting in Windows XP SP2 War; there's a little debate going on which has nothing to do with security, so I thought I'd write this :)

As you may be aware Windows XP SP2 will support “No Execute” or “NX”, which can mark memory as, well you guessed it, no execute. What this means is if a bad guy can get code onto the stack or heap through a buffer overrun, he can't get the code to run. Note, this is not a replacement for good - it's just goo ol' defense in depth. Which is goodness.

Right now the AMD Opteron and Athlon 64 (in 32-bit mode too) support NX. Intel's upcoming “Precott” will support it. And now, Transmeta has announced support too in their TM8000 “Efficeon” chips, which should be available mid-2004.

This is goodness.

You can read their announcement at http://investor.transmeta.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=135307.

by michael_HOWARD
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Comments

# Nick Parker said on May 18, 2004 10:32 AM:
What's the debate over?
# Michael Howard said on May 18, 2004 10:39 AM:
:)

War is always a series of debates, some more heated than others - this one was about the correct way to fix a Chinese localization issue! Nothing too serious!
# Nick Parker said on May 18, 2004 10:44 AM:
True, true, also relative to how often you use software supporting the Chinese language. :-)
# Sean McLeod said on May 19, 2004 1:54 PM:
Can you confirm the NX support matrix, CPU type and whether it supports it in 32bit mode and/or 64bit mode.

My understanding was that Intel's 'Prescott' doesn't support it but their 64bit Pentium 4s later this year will. Saw some comment that Intel will only support NX in 64bit mode.
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