Are Intel PTT (Intel Platform Trust Technology) and TPM chips functionally equivalent?
If I had a board with a Intel processor that supported PTT, would I have the same functions as if I had a hardwired TPM chip, e.g support of Trousers, etc.?
How do you discover if a particular Intel processor supports PTT?
The Intel Platform Trust Technology (PTT) architecture, first introduced in 2013 on 4th generation chips, implements TPM functionality within the CPU. PTT fully supports all Microsoft’s requirements for firmware Trusted Platform Module (fTPM) 2.0 specification.
To your operating system and applications, there should be no discernible difference between using PTT or using a dedicated TPM chip.
You will typically have an option in your firmware configuration utility to enable or disable PTT if your processor supports a fTPM. On Windows, you can check if you are using a TPM or a fTPM (PTT) by running TPM.MSC. On Linux, check under /sys/class/tpm, sys/kernel/security/tpm or your boot log.
The easiest way is to check in the BIOS. Usually you have to enable it in the BIOS if you want to use it because the default is disabled on all the systems I've seen.
Related
I know that vmware's Vsphere VM's can be encrypted using a KMS server but can the actual drive which vsphere is hosted on be encrypted? In Microsoft the hyper-visor host can be encrypted if bit-locker is enabled.
Not explicitly. You can, however, use Secure Boot to ensure that only signed code is ran: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2017/05/secure-boot-esxi-6-5-hypervisor-assurance.html
Based on Kyle Rudy's vmware link the following is good to note:
https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2017/05/secure-boot-esxi-6-5-hypervisor-assurance.html
TPM and TXT
The question always comes up in customer conversations of “Does this require TPM or TXT??”. The answer is no. They are mutually exclusive. Secure Boot for ESXi is purely a function of the UEFI firmware and the validation of cryptographically signed code. Period.
Note that TPM 1.2 and TPM 2.0 are two vastly different implementations. They are not backwards compatible. There is support, via 3rd parties like HyTrust, for TPM 1.2 in ESXi 6.5.
TPM 2.0 is not supported in 6.5.
Standard BIOS firmware vs UEFI firmware
Typically, switching your hosts from their standard (legacy) BIOS firmware to UEFI firmware in some operating systems will cause issues. With ESXi, you can switch with no modification to ESXi. If you have installed 6.5 using standard BIOS and you want to try out Secure Boot then in the host firmware you can switch and ESXi will come up.
The reason i am interested is that there is an everlasting problem with linux and proprietary drivers. Why hardware vendors do not ship their drivers in LLVM IR form?
You can write Linux device drivers in user mode code. I have seen demonstrations written in Python (handy for prototyping).
Presumably your idea is that hardware vendors could ship a LLVM IR driver, and then the driver would work with x86, ARM, or anything else? Most hardware vendors are not interested in niche-markets, and only want to support their hardware on particular platforms that they have tested on.
There is very rarely any interesting IPR in a driver (although there may well be in the library on top of the driver). If vendors wanted to support multiple platforms, they could just ship C code with instructions to build, and a restrictive (or even GPL) license.
I want to test Linux KVM functionality. So to test, Instead of creating the Linux KVM (Hypervisor), I want to setup the emulator for that, which reduces the cost of hardware/resources.
Please let me know if is there any way to create emulator for Linux KVM ?
As you are looking for the emulation then BOCHS is your choice. One of the KVM's requirements is the Virtualization support by the host CPU.
According to the chip support list it emulates AMD Phenom X3 8650 among other AMD and Intel models. The real AMD Phenom X3 8650 does support AMD-V technology. However, I can't tell you to what extent the implementation is complete. Anyway, you could try all emulated AMD models that supports AMD-V and Intel models that supports VT-x and see what happens.
However, do not expect it to be sufficiently fast as you are going to run KVM guest inside KVM host running inside BOCHS emulator.
I have experience writing a C program and burning the program into a chip using an IDE provided by the chip manufacturer.
I also heard that there is a concept called SoC, which means an operating system, like Linux, is running on a chip. In this case, I can run my program on the chip just like on a Linux PC.
I don't really know the differences between these two kinds of chips. Are they the same? Can I install Linux on every chip?
And I have to use a chip called Renesas V850 in my work. Which kind of chip is this V850?
SoC is just a marketing term for 'more than a processor on a chip'. It doesn't mean Linux or operating system.
Years ago, each part of a system was on its own chip: processor, serial port, memory, ADC, DAC, etc. You had a PCB and a schematic that tied them all together.
Over time, more and more got integrated into the processor, particularly for application-specific processors and microcontrollers. Today, pretty much only big iron processors like Intel and AMD flagship processors are stand-alone, and even then there's some x86 chip produced that are 'SoC's (like the AMD Geode line, if that's still around). Everything else has USB ports, serial ports, ADCs, DACs, even wireless radios integrated into the same die.
As for 'what is a Renasas v850?' You'd do better to google that and read the product documentation. It isn't an ARM or MIPs core, and it doesn't appear to support the mainline Linux kernel, only μClinux.
The Renesas V850 Wikipedia page states that the Linux kernel support for v850 has been absent since version 2.6.27 (which released in 2008).
Typically, you need to know what group your chip belongs to and to read more about it on Renesas website. They provide all the documentation you may need. There is also a section for application notes and sample code that may also help.
I have a very simple Toshiba Laptop with i3 processor. Also, I do not have any expensive graphics card. In the display settings, I see Intel(HD) Graphics as display adapter. I am planning to learn some cuda programming. But, I am not sure, if I can do that on my laptop as it does not have any nvidia's cuda enabled GPU.
In fact, I doubt, if I even have a GPU o_o
So, I would appreciate if someone can tell me if I can do CUDA programming with the current configuration and if possible also let me know what does Intel(HD) Graphics mean?
At the present time, Intel graphics chips do not support CUDA. It is possible that, in the nearest future, these chips will support OpenCL (which is a standard that is very similar to CUDA), but this is not guaranteed and their current drivers do not support OpenCL either. (There is an Intel OpenCL SDK available, but, at the present time, it does not give you access to the GPU.)
Newest Intel processors (Sandy Bridge) have a GPU integrated into the CPU core. Your processor may be a previous-generation version, in which case "Intel(HD) graphics" is an independent chip.
Portland group have a commercial product called CUDA x86, it is hybrid compiler which creates CUDA C/ C++ code which can either run on GPU or use SIMD on CPU, this is done fully automated without any intervention for the developer. Hope this helps.
Link: http://www.pgroup.com/products/pgiworkstation.htm
If you're interested in learning a language which supports massive parallelism better go for OpenCL since you don't have an NVIDIA GPU. You can run OpenCL on Intel CPUs, but at best you can learn to program SIMDs.
Optimization on CPU and GPU are different. I really don't think you can use Intel card for GPGPU.
Intel HD Graphics is usually the on-CPU graphics chip in newer Core i3/i5/i7 processors.
As far as I know it doesn't support CUDA (which is a proprietary NVidia technology), but OpenCL is supported by NVidia, ATi and Intel.
in 2020 ZLUDA was created which provides CUDA API for Intel GPUs. It is not production ready yet though.