Meltdown and Spectre

Rob and Jason are joined by Matt Godbolt to talk about the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities and how they affect C++ Programmers.

Matt is a developer at trading firm DRW. Before that he's worked at Google, run a C++ tools company, and spent over a decade in the games industry making PC and console games. He is fascinated by performance and created Compiler Explorer, to help understand how C++ code ends up looking to the processor. When not performance tuning C++ code he enjoys writing emulators for 8-bit computers in Javascript.

News

• More C++ Idioms
• C++ Tips of the Week (Abseil)
• Retpoline: a software construct for preventing branch-target-injection
• GCC 8.0 supports std::filesystem now

Matt Godbolt

• @mattgodbolt
• Matt Godbolt's blog

Links

• Compiler Explorer
• CppCon 2017: Matt Godbolt "What Has My Compiler Done for Me Lately? Unbolting the Compiler's Lid"
• GOTO 2016: Matt Godbolt "Emulating a 6502 system in Javascript"
• GOTO 2014: Matt Godbolt "x86 Internals for Fun & Profit"
• Patreon: Matt Godbolt is creating Compiler Explorer
• Finding a CPU Design Bug in the Xbox 360
• Meltdown and Spectre
• Vulnerability Note VU#584653

Sponsors

• Backtrace
• Embo++

Hosts

• @robwirving
• @lefticus