Users cry foul after AMD stripped memory crypto from its consumer CPUs
https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/06/users-cry-foul-after-amd-stripped-memory-crypto-from-its-consumer-cpus/Open linkView original on lemmy.today135
Comments19https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/06/users-cry-foul-after-amd-stripped-memory-crypto-from-its-consumer-cpus/Open linkView original on lemmy.today
AMD is losing a lot goodwill recently. At this rate, I am willing to only buy their GPUs because their drivers works the best on my OS of choice. Sad to see.
Okay what CPU would you like to buy then?
Intel? I can highly recommend their built in backdoors and self destructing CPUs
Smells like click/rage-bait.
At first: A single user complained.
Second: What is Transparent Secure Memory Encryption?
What's the use case here for a normal user? Somebody must physically try to read your RAM while you sit next to your PC and if this is the case your entire on-site security is already completely compromised.
Also encrypting RAM the entire time - even though you totally don't need it - will likely cause a performance impact.
And to top it all off that feature was NEVER official supported in AMD consumer CPUs.
Can someone explain how this is supposed to be AMDs fault?
It does cause a performance impact. I have it disabled for that reason. (2%-3%overhead for benchmarking when chasing high scores). Not something you’d notice during normal use.
Physical security is shit. If you rely on this you will eventually get stolen
AMD is not having a great news cycle huh
They know they don't really have to care about the news cycle anymore. The huge tech companies are above such things as consequences from public outrage. No policies are going to hurt them because they have Trump, and no consumer outrage is gonna make them lose money, because they aren't making most of their money from consumers anymore, the make them from the investor cartel circlejerk.
What they don't know is that Trump will be gone one day and the whole AI hype will come crashing down.
I'm pretty sure Intel will not exist anymore in 2-3 years.
Trump will be gone, not the entirety of the united states of america
I'm pretty sure they know those two things.
I really don't understand that restriction. Why do it?
Upselling people to their higher end CPUs that still support it
Nvidia was bad about this before the memory shortage. I need loads of VRAM but don't care about millions of cuda cores.
As an AMD consumer, why would I care about this...?
Reading the article AMD pushed a update and that update removed a feature that was once supported. There was also no mention that the update would remove said feature.
I dont know, but to me its like buying a car with heated seats. Then getting a update pushed, and those seats being disabled with no way to activate them. Or like having your old iphone performance artificially slowed through updates.
The big question is was this accidental in disabling this feature, or was it calculated. And if it was calculated why was there no announcement. The whole thing smells IMO.
Long story short, the hardware supports it, but the software disabled it.
wait. so its not something they just removed in future chips. they removed it from the firmware?
You might not, someone who self hosts sensitive information might, someone developing software might, someone who is into cyber security might.
Not everything is just about you and your specific use case.
Well, to me it is, that's why I am earnestly asking the question. Do I/the day to day consumer need to lose our shit over this.
Here is how it concerns you:
By restricting what people can and can't do (by removing features you don't use), they slowly restrict our collective ability to independently verify their claims or to independently serve our own needs - making us more reliant on them.
It's small and minor, but it's just like with the DMCA and the new ID laws. It's about slowly erecting barriers that impede our ability to act collectively or anonymously under the guise of it being "for our own good."