AMD SME (Secure Memory Encryption, Memory Guard) in Ryzen Pro and Epyc CPUs, Intel Cuts Prices

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Wed Oct 2 22:39:24 PDT 2019


https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-dramatically-cuts-prices-of-top-end-i9-gaming-chips/

Intel been cutting prices across all lines, typically in topend parts,
in response to AMD's new lead in hardware. Shows customers
of (and vocally supporting of) monopolie$ like Intel just how hard
they themselves have been getting raped by monopolies over
the years.



https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/amd-ryzen-pro-3000-series-desktop-cpus-will-offer-full-ram-encryption/
https://www.amd.com/en/ryzen-pro

Could solve ColdBoot attacks, but only if encryption
keys are not accessible via solder pin readout or
proprietary or OS software access...

Monday, AMD announced Ryzen Pro 3000 desktop CPUs would be available
in Q4 2019. This of course raises the question, "What's a Ryzen Pro?"
The business answer: Ryzen Pro 3000 is a line of CPUs specifically
intended to power business-class desktop machines. The Pro line ranges
from the humble dual-core Athlon Pro 300GE all the way through to
Ryzen 9 Pro 3900, a 12-core/24-thread monster. The new parts will not
be available for end-user retail purchase and are only available to
OEMs seeking to build systems around them.

>From a more technical perspective, the answer is that the Ryzen Pro
line includes AMD Memory Guard, a transparent system memory encryption
feature that appears to be equivalent to the AMD SME (Secure Memory
Encryption) in Epyc server CPUs. Although AMD's own press materials
don't directly relate the two technologies, their description of
Memory Guard -- "a transparent memory encryption (OS and application
independent DRAM encryption) providing a cryptographic AES encryption
of system memory" -- matches Epyc's SME exactly. AMD Memory Guard is
not, unfortunately, available in standard Ryzen 3000 desktop CPUs. If
you want to build your own Ryzen PC with full memory encryption from
scratch, you're out of luck for now.


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