Intel recently
published a paper detailing a proposal for a new type of CPU memory that would mitigate against speculative execution side-channel attacks, including Spectre-class vulnerabilities.
Intel’s STrategic Offensive Research & Mitigations (STORM) team came up with the proposal for the new Speculative-Access Protected Memory (SAPM) feature that Intel is still researching. The idea is that SAPM would replace existing CPU memory with a more secure memory standard that would be resilient against Spectre-class attacks, including security vulnerabilities like Meltdown, Foreshadow, MDS, SpectreRSB and Spoiler.
STORM's research paper, published last week, said that development of SAMP is only at the "theory and possible implementation options" level. In other words, there’s no concrete idea that Intel and other CPU makers can implement right away; there still needs to be a significant amount of testing before it can become a viable CPU feature.
