Cannonlake/Icelake Desktop CPUs Won't Have PKU Memory Protection Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Cannonlake/Icelake Desktop CPUs Won't Have PKU Memory Protection Support

Support for Memory Protection Keys (a.k.a. PKU / PKEYs) was finished up this year in the Linux kernel, glibc, and related components. This memory protection feature premiered with Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs and is said to be coming to future desktop CPUs, but it doesn't look like that's happening for the Cannonlake or Icelake generations...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Cannonlake-Icelake-No-PKU

[willmore]

Might a feature like this mitigate the SPECTRE or MELTDOWN vulnerabilities? Could we see a reversel of this policy? Seems the quicker way for Intel to address this issue than having to completely reengineer the CPU core.