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avuton

I was under the impression that they weren't susceptible.

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There's a non-exhaustive list here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/security-center/advi...

Intel® Atom™ Processor C Series

Intel® Atom™ Processor E Series

Intel® Atom™ Processor A Series

Intel® Atom™ Processor x3 Series

Intel® Atom™ Processor Z Series

This being said, this is the current status for my old Atom N270 (2008): https://imgur.com/a/pbeJ306

Unless the tool is wrong, but I think it was generally marketed as a reliable source. In which case maybe someone can recommend a reliable one to test the vulnerability.

Tools usually just check CPUID and system configuration and don't actually test vulnerabilities. And not necessarily interpreting everything correctly. You can do that without running anything, just checking your OS updates and whether your CPU is out-of-order one, i.e. with speculative execution. N270 isn't and therefore isn't vulnerable.

If you want to truly test speculative vulnerabilities, compile this program: https://github.com/Eugnis/spectre-attack (EDIT: although this one probably won't work on N270, since it uses rdtscp, that it doesn't have, need to find version with just rdtsc)

So, old Atoms are the only ones still usable intel systems and not vulnerable to Meltdown/Spectre/ME.

No, the Xeon Phi "accelerators" are usable too, they are basically 486 cores on modern litography (to allow for higher density/clock speeds), with a vector unit attached to them. I don't know how hard it would be to boot linux on one though...

Only the first generation (X100 model numbers). If I remember right they ship with Linux already, but need a host system to run in of course.

This host system should be not much more than a PCIe root emulator though. This is the level one can get on an e.g. FPGA with custom logic, which implies that any attempts to insert hardware/firmware level attacks into the actual logic you care about is near impossible to do due to the low-level nature of the custom PCIe implementation.

They already run linux as their firmware, you can ssh into the cards.

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