New CPU Feature ERAPS Reduces Software Tax for Hardware Bugs

With the 5th gen AMD EPYC CPU, formerly codenamed “Turin,” AMD introduced a new feature in its processors: ERAPS - Enhanced RAP Security. For Linux, this feature allows software mitigations to be relaxed that were put in place after the SpectreRSB vulnerability was disclosed in hardware back in 2018. This feature makes the software invulnerable to certain speculative attacks, thereby providing the…