Apple Silicon's Speculative Execution: Performance Boost and Security Risks
2025-02-28
Apple silicon chips employ out-of-order execution, Load Address Prediction (LAP), and Load Value Prediction (LVP) to boost performance. These techniques predict instruction execution order and memory access values for efficiency gains, but introduce security vulnerabilities like Spectre, SLAP, and FLOP. While exploiting these vulnerabilities is challenging and requires targeting specific CPU architectures, the risks may grow with future CPU advancements. Apple and other chipmakers need to proactively address these security challenges.