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by duskwuff 3335 days ago
> The fact that both AMD and ARM integrated similar technologies at around the same time is too much coincidence.

Don't believe the FSF's FUD. TrustZone is really not comparable at all to Intel's Management Engine or AMD's Secure Processor:

* TrustZone is an operating mode of the CPU, not a separate processor. Fundamentally, it's not all that different from supervisor mode; it's just more privileged. (If you really wanted, you could probably write an OS that ran parts of the kernel in TrustZone.)

* You don't have to have anything running under TrustZone. Indeed, most processors which support TrustZone (e.g, most Android phones) aren't using it at all.

* The TrustZone specification is publicly available [1]. You can read about it all you want. (If you're brave enough and have the right development tools, you can even write code to run in it.)

* ARM's reference implementation of a TrustZone OS is also publicly available [2]. If you're curious how it works, you can see for yourself. (This doesn't include the application code which may be present in specific implementations, of course.)

[1]: https://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/trustzo...

[2]: https://github.com/ARM-software/arm-trusted-firmware

2 comments

> Don't believe the FSF's FUD

Don't believe anti-FSF FUD. If you think they have an issue with TrustZone itself, as opposed to devices using it without owner's control, I'd love to see the links.

>If you really wanted, you could probably write an OS that ran parts of the kernel in TrustZone.

https://genode.org/documentation/articles/trustzone