Intel Retires SGX: What it Means for Fortanix
Intel just announced (link) that the upcoming generation of Xeon CPUs (code name Diamond Rapids) will be the last to provide the Software Guard Extensions (SGX) instruction set.
As a company that has built products on this secure enclave technology for the past ten years, Fortanix needs to weigh in on what this means tactically and strategically.
In the short term, of course, nothing changes. Fortanix has a lot of code written specifically for SGX, but CPU lifecycles are long—especially for servers—and our investment in SGX is safe and secure. We remain committed to Confidential Computing on secure enclaves and there is lots of time to adopt alternative technology to run our products on.
The strategic picture is considerably more exciting. Fortanix’ mission has always been to bring security, control, and manageability to Confidential Computing regardless of the hardware technology in use.
Many hardware vendors have integrated Confidential Computing technologies into their products: some for specific purposes, others with broader applicability. We are already working with partners such as AMD and NVIDIA (links) to secure and manage workloads on their Trusted Execution Engine (TEE) technologies.
With combined attestations, Fortanix Confidential AI established trust in combinations of CPUs and GPUs that run customer workloads on their enclaves.
Secure enclave technologies enable running known software on known, trusted hardware by taking platform measurements and having them independently attested before starting workloads and releasing the encryption keys that unlock model weights and data.
This process has many moving parts, and Fortanix aims not only to secure it but also to streamline it and empower customers to unlock the vast potential of Artificial Intelligence without sacrificing the security of their Intellectual Property or the data they are responsible for.
This has never been about a specific chipset or instruction set: Fortanix got its start on Intel SGX because it was first to market and the best in the business.
We value our partnership with Intel and continue to work closely with them on trusted enclave technologies. But with a plethora of vendors in the market and Confidential Computing gaining mainstream acceptance, there has never been a more exciting time to be in this business.
