GCC 6 To Enable Intel's MPX Library By Default

Since GCC 5 there has been support for Intel Memory Protection Extensions (MPX) in the compiler, but it's been disabled by default. That's now changing.

Intel MPX support landed in time for GCC 5.0 but with it having landed close to release time, it was disabled by default. Now for the GCC 6 release in 2016, libmpx support will be enabled by default for all supported targets. This change was approved for landing this week ahead of the planned move of GCC's code-base to stage three this weekend, which will mark the end of feature development.

Intel MPX is an instruction set extension added with Skylake and with the compiler / OS / runtime library support is designed to increase security by checking pointer references at runtime. Memory Protection Extensions are explained in more detail via this Intel Software article.

For details on using Intel MPX with GCC, see this Wiki page.