Machine Posture¶

"AI-ready" usually means a machine can run a model fast enough. AInternet needs a harder question:

Which proven routes may this machine carry?

A laptop may be fine for local inference and still not be allowed to carry a sealed multi-actor business transaction. A workstation may carry hardware-backed encryption, TPM key custody, protected DMA and audit-grade route posture. Machine posture describes that difference.

Not A Trust Score¶

Machine posture does not say a computer is morally trusted. It says which routes the machine can bear under current evidence.

Examples:

safe for local inference
encrypts at line rate with AES-NI
can hold sealed multi-actor runtime
cannot support A5 sign-ahead under load
supports protected DMA hot-transfer lane

What Is Checked¶

Area	Example signals
CPU	AES-NI, PCLMULQDQ, FMA3, AVX2/AVX-512
Memory	protected DMA, pinned buffers, userfaultfd capability
Identity	local JIS key custody, TPM2 availability
Kernel	KVM, IOMMU, namespace/cgroup support
GPU	local GPU, DMA path, P2P/topology where available
Audit	local TIBET trail, sign-ahead capability, durable receipts
Network	local/private/public route mode, MUX guard

Unknowns should stay unknown. A machine must not claim a lane it did not prove.

CPU features are evidence, not extra route digits. FMA3, AES-NI or AVX-512 can help a machine carry a route, but they do not raise the route posture by themselves. They are attested separately, then consumed by policy.

Route Carrying¶

Machine posture combines with route posture:

route posture proves what the route is
machine posture proves whether this box may carry it

Example:

route: #54359
payload: hot_transfer
machine: supports pinned DMA + protected route + sign-ahead
verdict: can carry

If a required capability is missing, the route should hold, degrade or go dark rather than pretend.

Bifurcated Airlock¶

For cadence and compute-sensitive lanes, machine posture needs more than a CPU flag. It needs a reproducibility gate.

A bifurcated airlock runs the same workload in two isolated cells. Each cell carries a CPU capability receipt. The lane is provable only when:

same declared compute semantics
same workload
same output bytes

If one cell uses single-rounding FMA and the other uses separate multiply/add, the cells are not comparable and the airlock fails before the lane is claimed. If both cells claim the same semantics but produce different bytes, the route is held as nondeterministic or tampered.

This is the missing bridge between "AI-ready hardware" and "this machine may carry this A2A route". A GPU, CPU or TPM feature is not a trust score; it is evidence that a particular route can or cannot be carried.

Operator Output¶

A useful machine posture command should explain both allowed and missing pieces:

machine posture
  ok   AES-NI: line-rate encryption available
  ok   FMA3: local inference compute lane available
  ok   IOMMU: protected DMA boundary available
  ok   airlock: bifurcated cell output matched byte-for-byte
  hold AVX-512: not present, A5 sign-ahead under load not claimed
  ok   TPM2: local key custody available

can carry:
  #34358 hot_transfer: yes
  #54359 composite hot_transfer: yes, if relation and receipt are fresh
  #00000 unknown route: no, dark route

Machine-Readable¶

https://ainternet.org/api.json — machine posture, route explain and audit verbs
https://ainternet.org/resources.json — hardware and conformance references