alt Hacker NewsUnfortunately, the headline is somewhat optimistic compared to the reality, I think.
The thread makes it sound like it could have been disabled due to errata or performance issues. Basically, it looks like the software Google is shipping intentionally doesn't use MTE on the Pixel 11 hardware. That raises the question of...what does Google know is wrong with MTE on the Pixel 11?
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worldsavior • yesterday at 3:19 PM
Nothing is wrong. They just don't use MTE yet, they probably have other priorities. They wanted to save some costs until they will use MTE, so they removed some hardware acceleration and downgraded the GPU. Simple as that.
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Yokolos • yesterday at 3:29 PM
I've read that there's a significant performance cost to MTE on Android (or on Tensor). It might just be that.
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> it looks like the software Google is shipping intentionally doesn't use MTE on the Pixel 11 hardware. That raises the question of...what does Google know is wrong with MTE on the Pixel 11?
Apple replaced MTE with an upgraded version that can run in synchronous mode all the time without the performance hit.
> Consider that MTE can be configured to report memory corruption either synchronously or asynchronously. In the latter mode, memory corruption doesn’t immediately raise an exception, leaving a race window open for attackers... We believe memory safety protections need to be strictly synchronous, on by default, and working continuously.
https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement...
Google may just be getting ready to follow suit.