- We are aware of the recent industry-wide announcement regarding vulnerabilities with certain advanced microprocessors.
- Like many other companies, we are actively reviewing the situation and working with Arm, the open source community and software partners to understand the impact and potential mitigations.
- We recommend that our customers using TI devices based on Cortex-A8, Cortex-A9, and Cortex-A15 architectures reference information available on Arm’s website to determine whether their application is affected based on how it is being used. The level of action needed varies depending on the use-case of each end-product.
- It is important to understand:
- Arm has confirmed that Variant 3 (Meltdown) does not affect Cortex-A8, Cortex-A9, and Cortex-A15 architectures.
- TI DSPs and MCUs are not affected by either vulnerability (Spectre or Meltdown)
Update June 19, 2018:
- TI has been working with Arm, the open-source community, and software partners to address Variants 1 and 2 of the Speculative Processor Vulnerability that affects certain ARM cores. At this time:
- Arm (Variant 1): Arm’s website describes mitigations that can used in application code for Variant 1.
- Linux Kernel (Variants 1 & 2): Once Arm and community developers agree on v7 patches being developed by Linaro, TI will include the mainlined backports into its 4.9 and 4.14 forks of the Linux kernel.
- Uboot (Variant 2): TI is working with the community on patches to the mainline. Customers should monitor this post to look for the updates.
- According to Arm, the newly discovered Variant 4 does not impact 32-bit Processor cores (Cortex A8, A9 or A15); as a result, TI processors are not believed to be impacted.
