[bloorp]

So is speculative execution just inherently flawed like this, or can we expect chips in 2 years that let operating systems go back to the old TLB behavior?

[AndrewBissell]

Yeah I was wondering this myself. Even if there's some fiddly hardware fix to make speculative execution secure, how much of its performance gains will we have to give up to get there?

[mtanski]

Speculative execution as a concept should not be flawed. My take is that the results of illegal speculation should never be leaked in a visable way.

[rurban]

Only on Intel. Others restrict prefetches on permissions.

I think this might even be fixed by microcode patches on Intel, at least os specific, looking at the first address bit.

[richardwhiuk]

If they could have done microcode patches they would have done, suggesting they can't.