Observed arrival · 2026-08-25
The History of Hardware-Enforced Security
A documentary research project tracing how hardware came to enforce privilege, memory protection, device isolation, attestation, trusted execution, and microarchitectural boundaries.
Field notes
The project treats platform security as a chain of dependencies rather than a single privileged component, linking CPU privilege to memory translation, hypervisor policy, device mediation, measurement, and verification. Its six-episode genealogy includes Atlas, IBM System/360, x86 protected mode, Xen and Intel VT-d, TPM and Linux IMA, Intel SGX, and the Spectre/Meltdown era. The page labels its central framework an authorial synthesis and identifies where each historical period leaves unresolved boundaries.
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