News: 0001636168

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Intel TDX Runtime Updates Looks Like It Will Land For Linux 7.2

([Intel] 6 Hours Ago Intel TDX Module Runtime Updates)


A feature that has been worked on for a while now by Intel Linux engineers is for allowing run-time updates of the Trusted Domain Extensions (TDX) module without having to reboot the running server. For Linux 7.2 it looks like that feature will be all-set for allowing the easier roll-out of security updates and the like for this confidential computing capability on modern Intel Xeon servers.

[1]Trust Domain Extensions is a great feature of modern Xeon processors as hardware-based confidential computing tech for VM isolation. But with the TDX module loaded by the BIOS at boot time, up to now if needing to update it has meant rebooting the server. But TDX's P-SEAMLDR can allow for facilitating TDX module updates at run-time.

Te code to allow for TDX module updates under Linux has underwent ten rounds of code review but now looks ready for the mainline kernel. The TDX runtime update support was recently queued into tip/tip.git's [2]x86/tdx branch . With the code now in a prominent TDX Git branch ahead of next month's Linux 7.2 merge window, it looks like it will be submitted for that kernel version barring any last minute issues.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Trust+Domain+Extensions

[2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip.git/log/?h=x86/tdx


A feed salesman is on his way to a farm. As he's driving along at forty
m.p.h., he looks out his car window and sees a three-legged chicken running
alongside him, keeping pace with his car. He is amazed that a chicken is
running at forty m.p.h. So he speeds up to forty-five, fifty, then sixty
m.p.h. The chicken keeps right up with him the whole way, then suddenly
takes off and disappears into the distance.
The man pulls into the farmyard and says to the farmer, "You know,
the strangest thing just happened to me; I was driving along at at least
sixty miles an hour and a chicken passed me like I was standing still!"
"Yeah," the farmer replies, "that chicken was ours. You see, there's
me, and there's Ma, and there's our son Billy. Whenever we had chicken for
dinner, we would all want a drumstick, so we'd have to kill two chickens.
So we decided to try and breed a three-legged chicken so each of us could
have a drumstick."
"How do they taste?" said the farmer.
"Don't know," replied the farmer. "We haven't been able to catch
one yet."