The real truth is that the difficulty of containment is proportional to the interface that is available to the contained process. You don't need VM or hypervisor technology to build a virtually unbreakable container. You only need to prevent the contained process from using any syscalls at all.
Hardware only seems better at this kind of stuff because (a) it's harder to find errata in hardware and (b) the syscall interfaces of commonly used operating systems are much larger than what the hardware offers, and were developed without keeping containability in mind. It is a well known fact that tacking on security features in hindsight is problematic.
You don't need super-human chip designers because, as you say, "the difficulty of containment is proportional to the interface that is available". Hardware doesn't just seem better because "the syscall interfaces of commonly used operating systems are much larger than what the hardware offers", it is better. It is easier to analyse, has a more limited state-space, has more provable behavior, etc.
You can't just argue away the fact that a certain class of error has been all but eliminated by hardware-supported virtual memory. Multi-tasking as we know it today would basically be impossible without it. The reliability of "just get it right" systems like the early Macintosh isn't even comparable to, for example, a modern Linux machine that uses the chip to trap large classes of erroneous memory accesses.
Given that we have the above, a case of a class of error that programmers seemed unable to eliminate (practically) eliminated, I'm not really sure what you're arguing. Are you saying that hardware designers of the 80's were superhuman?
My point is that there is no difference between software and hardware.
You don't need hardware to eliminate memory errors: software can do it as well. Two examples of this are the Singularity system that Microsoft Research built and Google's NaCl, where the system only loads code that can be verified not to access memory incorrectly.
Your claim that hardware is easier to analyze is also incorrect. Modern processors are extremely complex beasts and are not inherently simpler than software. All processors have long lists of errata. You may be mislead into thinking hardware is easier to secure because (a) those errata are less visible to userspace developers because the kernel shields you from them and (b) hardware developers invest much more resources into formal verification than software developers out of necessity (you can't just patch silicon). If software developers invested a similar amount of effort into formal verification tools, your impression would be rather different.
Again, the point is that there is no inherent distinction between software and hardware when it comes to securing systems. It is always and everywhere first a question of how you design your systems and interfaces and second a question of investment in development effort targeted at eliminating bugs.
"My point is that there is no difference between software and hardware."
Okay, now I see where you're coming from. Theoretically I agree. However, practically there are a number of things that make hardware different:
* Hardware has inherent "buy-in". The software systems you describe as also solving the memory access problem are basically opt-in frameworks. While you can make software frameworks hard to opt-out of (e.g. OS integration etc.) by definition... software runs on hardware...
* hardware solutions are often much more transparent. Again, your software example require a great deal of re-tooling. One of the most elegant aspects of the classic 80's memory access solution was how transparent it was.
* The ratio of software to hardware vendors has far fewer hardware vendors. Combine this with the fact that, as you point out, hardware is so expensive to retool and you create an environment where it is much more likely that a single hardware solution will be "correct enough" to enforce a constraint on software than it is the case that the majority of software will properly opt-in to a framework/code-correctly.
> You now rely on chip designers being super-human.
At this point I want to ask how we're defining "super-human." What level of reliability is considered to have "super-human" requirements? There are certainly very simple and clear ways that one product produced by normal humans is much more reliable than another. For example, if you admonished someone to wear their seat belt while driving, you would scoff if they replied "well then I'm just relying on seat belt designers being super-human."
I actually agree with this. I believe that, using the right techniques, both software and hardware can be produced correctly. It's a function of their design and complexity how easy it is.
It's also worth keeping in mind that modern processors are actually extremely complex and that they do regularly have errata, even though chip designers are extremely conservative in their approach by necessity (you can't just patch silicon) and are much more thorough and disciplined in their use of formal verification tools than the vast majority of software designers.
The real truth is that the difficulty of containment is proportional to the interface that is available to the contained process. You don't need VM or hypervisor technology to build a virtually unbreakable container. You only need to prevent the contained process from using any syscalls at all.
Hardware only seems better at this kind of stuff because (a) it's harder to find errata in hardware and (b) the syscall interfaces of commonly used operating systems are much larger than what the hardware offers, and were developed without keeping containability in mind. It is a well known fact that tacking on security features in hindsight is problematic.