Attack surface is reduced with architecture like this. You really don’t know what you are talking about or what problems are addressed with this stuff.
Bullshit. You really have no clue what you are talking about. The absence of an attack surface is as small as an attack surface gets. When you add something that can be attacked, you are adding an attack surface that was not there before you added it.
You still seem to think that other people’s resources are infinite,
On the contrary, you are the one advocating for resource waste. Omitting the spychip uses far fewer resources both for producing and then customer resources for powering it. Then human resources are wasted for controlling the attacks (because you added an attack surface) and for accidental defects (because you added the unnecessary complexity of closed-source software which ensures there is more code that can go wrong and also simultaneously fewer brains reviewing it).
It’s not just an extra chip. That chip needs a driver. The driver doesn’t write itself. So that takes resources. And that driver creates another point of failure and attack surface. It also requires resources to maintain that driver. And when AMD disregards their “duty of care” because the chip is too old to be profitable thus drops support, the resources of consumers are wasted dealing with the problem (which they should never have had in the first place).
but this time criticising a corp that should have a duty of care in this regard.
You sound like a corporate spokesperson for a chip maker. “Duty of care” entails not subjecting your customer to a needless attack surface. What you fail to grasp is the spychip is for corporate customers, not individuals who do not need a closed-source blob in the core of their CPU. Individuals did not ask for a nanny. We requested a CPU that we control ourselves. Forcing us (individuals) to have a nanny we don’t want is a reckless abandonment of duty.