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Intel Opens CDSA Source
Quite a number of people have written over the last couple of days about Intel's decision to open-source CDSA, their security software, when it's released on May 15. That's their Common Data Security Architecture -- it's an enterprise-level security application.
He, now Monterey has become a "Linux project".
;)
;)
Where's my moderator points when I need em?
I never understood the whole Project Monterey thing.. IBM never needed SCO: Linux development on Merced/IA64 was always further ahead (thanks to Intel's involvement) IIRC, I'm wondering what kind of extrication dances are going on in Austin... Sheeit, I coulda told IBM this when I worked for them, but listen to a lowly sysadmin?
IBM's still cool tho, imo.. Anyone got a used RS6k model 340 + 2-drive caddy + 64MB RAM + AIX >=4.2 + 6091 monitor they'd be willing to part with for about $300? I'm feeling nostalgic and I gots room on the desk
Your Working Boy,
Right on there. I remember about a year ago, Kipling BagPeople had a contest going that if you could "hack" their site you'd getcherself a free bag and whatnot.
The "hack" was actually a wide-open javascript algorithm that took something like a week or two to brute force crack. I believe I still have the source somewhere for reference..
-niteq
The article linked to didn't really do much to explain CDSA... I'm curious. What does it do?
I have no truck with the "open source hot grits Portman" trollers, but this post is at least a bit amusing. Trollmastuh got nailed like this yesterday......
And I noticed that the chickenshit moderator marked it as overrated so that the M2 stage wouldn't affect their karma.
From the moderator guidelines:
Good Comments (...) are clear, hopefully well written, or maybe amusing. These are the gems we're looking for, and they deserve to be promoted.
Maybe Rob should add another moderation heading "-1 : Personal Vendetta"...
This is posted at +2; I've got karma to spare and I want more people to see it. Moderators, prove that some of you didn't leave your brain on your pillow this morning.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
The thing that really confused me was the references in the article to this software being Itanium optimized. Fair enough then, Intel's motives could be seen as carrot dangling to persuade consumers to migrate more enthusiastically to a nascent technology platform. Then I was left wondering exactly how source code would be Itanium optimized. Surely it could be optimally tweaked and recompiled for any platform, even non-intel architectures
Possibly it is just a buzz-word. The Itanium is going to have to do good things for Intel otherwise they are going to be up the proverbial creek as far as 64 bit processors goes, and this is not a playing field they have to themselves (with 64 bit POWER, Alpha and AMD Sledgehammer processors also featuring). I suspect however that the source code makes copious use of things that the Itanium is supposed to do well - lots of use of 64 bit and longer integers in math processing, and accesses of memory in 64 bit lengths. Of course, that means that the current Athlon will also do well on the same code (see Aces hardware for an article on K7 memory access). So yes, you can write C code which favours a particular processor, as long as you understand it's strengths and weaknesses and have some appreciation of what the compiler does to your code. But I strongly suspect that knowing the most optimal set of compiler flags for a particular processor is also important in getting a given set of code to run as fast as possible.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Actually, it might be cheaper to buy linux (eg. from cheapbytes) than to download the thing over a modem, buy a CDR, and burn it yourself.
Jeff
stty erase ^H
This just goes to prove that the software they are releasing uses good, strong algorithms that don't rely on hiding the source for their effectiveness.
XenoWolf The Original - Since 1993
The only issue seems to be whether they can keep maintaining it open-sourced, if it is really opensourced in the first place. Now that would make them continually cool. And that is the hard thing for commercial interests to do.
However, *thwack* to ZDNet for an article that says almost nothing about CDSA, and instead focuses on marketing Itanium, Trillian, and Whistler (Windoze '01, if you didn't catch that). Note: it appears from the style of linking that this was actually three different articles that were tied together because they were related
Information wants to be free
Information wants to be free
So what? Guns want to kill, but we have laws against that.
Just because it's free, don't assume you'd actually want it.
Firstly, it's heavyweight, secondly it's an interface to a cloud of other interfaces, any one of which may be sufficient, and thirdly it drags along the assumptions of the authors about "what's good for the 'net".
As Laurence Lessig points out in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, a perfect authentication and identification system may be something you don't want.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Many companies think that just because they are open sourcing some stuff, they'll instantly become cool. Now what (i must say) i find interesting is that this is a hardware manufacturer.
Now, only if windows were GPL'd, i might actually buy a copy ;)
All of this is, of course, IMNSHO. Cheers, Elmo
I must confess to knowing vey little about this product , but I am also led to speculate if this is going to lead to any interesting crypto algorithims leaking their way out into open-source space. Security products often mean cryptography and as we all know, cryptography often means patents, so there could be some interesting issues there.
The thing that really confused me was the references in the article to this software being Itanium optimized. Fair enough then, Intel's motives could be seen as carrot dangling to persuade consumers to migrate more enthusiastically to a nascent technology platform. Then I was left wondering exactly how source code would be Itanium optimized. Surely it could be optimally tweaked and recompiled for any platform, even non-intel architectures.
Unless of course I'm missing the point as to what the product does and there is a hardware component of some kind.
Either that or its largely an assember source code release which people could already have disassembeled for themselves. But that would be ridiculous, so I'm still left pondering. Have to wait and see I guess. Anyone got any more information, or links
-- Oh Well