ado@elsie.UUCP (Arthur David Olson) (11/06/86)
> > Can system performance be improved by avoiding zero filling of the new > > memory? > > Yes, a little bit, but this would be an obvious security hole. What's clearly called for is a memory mapping feature that instructs the hardware to randomize the data in a page once it's been abandoned. A likely name would be "Destroy on Deallocation," or, for short, "DoD." Such a feature would allow paranoid programs to ensure security without penalizing other programs. -- UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T. -- UUCP: ..decvax!seismo!elsie!ado ARPA: elsie!ado@seismo.ARPA DEC, VAX, Elsie & Ado are Digital, Borden & Ampex trademarks.
ken@rochester.ARPA (Comfy chair) (11/07/86)
Re: hardware support for DoD (Destroy on Deallocation) Actually this idea was seriously suggested in one of the Multics papers (if I remember correctly), a hardware line that would reset all bits in a memory region. I surmise CPU speed has improved so much with respect to memory speed that this is no longer a significant penalty. Ken