Pinned loads: taming speculative loads in secure processors
Zirui Neil Zhao, Houxiang Ji, Adam Morrison, Darko Marinov, Josep Torrellas · 2022
In security frameworks for speculative execution, an instruction is said to reach its Visibility Point (VP) when it is no longer vulnerable to pipeline squashes. Before a potentially leaky instruction reaches its VP, it has to stall—unless a defense scheme such as invisible speculation provides protection. Unfortunately, either stalling or protecting the execution of pre-VP instructions typically has a performance cost.