this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
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5
AMD silently removes memory encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs, leaving users unaware that they may be vulnerable (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 2 months ago by RobotToaster@mander.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The headline is a little misleading: the feature has disappeared from consumer chips but AMD is not responding when asked why. As the article itself says: it's not clear if this is a deliberate decision, or a bug that has caused this issue.

The headline implies it was a deliberate action. Maybe it was, but at the moment we don't really know. But it is good that Toms Hardware is writing about this and drawing attention to this issue. It's concerning regardless of the reason, and it's also concerning how cagey AMD is being about addressing this issue.

[–] QuadratureSurfer@piefed.social 1 points 2 months ago

A little more context as to when the engineer declined to continue the discussion:

Kilpatrick then brought up something especially awkward. He reminded Lendacky of a comment that the engineer had made back in 2020, confirming that a Ryzen 3700X, a consumer CPU, “should support TSME.” In a later 2025 comment in the same discussion, Lendacky again recommended using TSME, while noting that the motherboard BIOS provider had to expose the option. So there it was, AMD's own engineer, years earlier, acknowledging the feature working on exactly the kind of lower-end chip now stripped of it, proving that Ryzen support was not some fantasy users invented.

After some more back-and-forth, Kilpatrick asked bluntly whether the flag being set to FALSE on consumer chips was a silicon-level limitation or a firmware policy decision — since one is permanent and the other is potentially reversible. Limonciello’s reply effectively closed the chapter. “My apologies, but I don’t have any more information to share on this topic,” he wrote.

To be fair to AMD, there is no clear indication that the company ever publicly advertised TSME as a consumer Ryzen feature. AMD has long said that a related memory protection, Secure Memory Encryption (SME), is available only in the Pro and EPYC CPU tiers. SME is OS-managed, using a single key and allowing the OS to selectively encrypt individual memory pages. TSME, by contrast, is firmware-managed, encrypting all RAM with no OS involvement.

Sounds to me like he had originally wanted to have it enabled for consumer CPUs, but some decision was later made to make this a feature only for higher end chips, even if lower end chips could technically support it. I can't really blame the engineer for wanting to stop the discussion at this point. He's most likely not the one making these decisions and the questions would be best asked to someone higher up.

[–] NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

YSK: This feature was disabled with a pushed firmware update.

Its true it was "not supported", but the CPU was/is capable of it.

The big issue here is did AMD disable it accidentally, or did they do it intentionally. If it was intentional why did they not announce it anywhere in the update notes, or anywhere else?

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Create the problem, sell the solution situation?

Or just enshitifcation?

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

what problem did they create?

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The lack of memory encryption....

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

are you saying AMD is the cause why the implementers of the x86 architecture did not encrypt RAM memory from the very beginning?

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 1 points 2 months ago

No, that is not what I am saying.

[–] SirHaxalot@nord.pub 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Hold up, since when did consumer Ryzen CPUs have memory encryption support? I was sure that was always a EPYC exclusive feature.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago

I think that’s the crux of the article. The feature was there on some chips but not supported. A new update now prevents access to the feature.

[–] BaraCoded@literature.cafe 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's funny how every big tech decision these last few years all sound like a shitty James Bond villain step in a shitty world domination plan, with shitty corpo writing.

[–] liuther9@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago

👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀