the crazy thing is that nobody saw this until recently.
https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/01/07/finding-a-cpu-d...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but speculative execution attacks (or at least the possibility) were known for several years before Spectre.
Mere causation can’t get you there. E.g. when a car hits a pedestrian, the driver and pedestrian equally “caused” the accident. It is only by way of characterizing their behaviors in one of the ways above that we can identify wrongdoing. Perhaps the driver wasn’t paying attention (negligent or reckless) and ran a red light. Or perhaps the pedestrian was intentionally throwing themselves in front of traffic. Etc.
[0] Products liability law on its surface does eschew the moral-wrongdoing requirement in favor of strict liability for some kinds of product defects. But that has to do with economic incentives, practical ability to prove claims, etc.
They could of course just reject the necessity of need Y, but if the majority of their clients actually do have need Y, can it really be said that the chip is successful at being general purpose?
chip consumers missing a communication is very different from intel actively developing this to cut corners for raw performance (which is the only reason they cornered the market) and forcing all other manufacturers to follow up or die.
And this feature was used to support not only many programs running at once, but also TSO (Time Sharing Option) which by definition is mutually untrusted code.