GCC 9 Removes Support for Intel Memory Protection Extensions (MPX)

In April, it was reported that GCC is preparing to abandon Intel Memory Protection Extensions (MPX), and Intel no longer maintains MPX code.

In a recent code submission, GCC completely removed the 42,014 lines of code and more than 500 files involved in MPX, which means that GCC 9 no longer supports the Intel Memory Protection Extensions.

Intel MPX is designed to provide better software security by checking pointer references, etc. to prevent buffer overflows. Although the adoption rate is not high, MPX support has existed since Intel Skylake CPU and has been widely used in the Linux protocol stack in recent years.

Some people prefer to use AddressSanitizer and other software alternatives to improve code security. Linux kernel developers have also been considering removing MPX from Linux. Developers like Red Hat and SUSE hope to abandon MPX to ease the maintenance burden. Now that GCC has removed MPX from the code, then the removal of MPX in the Linux kernel should also be certain. After all, MPX support depends on the compiler.

Source: Phoronix