AMD Drops TSME From Ryzen 7 9700X Consumer CPUs, Restricting Memory Encryption to Pro Chips
Updated
Updated · Ars Technica · Jun 15
AMD Drops TSME From Ryzen 7 9700X Consumer CPUs, Restricting Memory Encryption to Pro Chips
2 articles · Updated · Ars Technica · Jun 15
Summary
AMD has removed Transparent Secure Memory Encryption from consumer Ryzen CPUs without notice, ending a memory-protection feature users had come to expect on lower-end chips.
A Ryzen 7 9700X owner discovered the change in April when a Host Security ID audit on Linux flagged “encrypted RAM: not supported” even though TSME remained enabled in BIOS.
AMD declined to explain why the feature no longer works on those CPUs, saying only that TSME “is a security feature only applied to PRO CPUs as part of AMD PRO Technologies.”
TSME encrypts all data stored in memory to blunt cold-boot and other physical attacks, so its quiet removal narrows built-in protections for consumer systems and was hard to detect, especially on Windows.