We teach using Intel X86_64 CPUs for a variety of reasons

- Most academic research has been done on Intel systems, so it's easier for students reading papers to relate to their experiences in the labs

- X86_64 provides convenient cache flush and cycle measurement instructions in userspace

- Intel's strongly ordered memory model and cache inclusion policy makes cross-core side channels simpler to reason about

- Practically, it's easier to scale up server infrastructure on Intel (you can do most of the labs on inexpensive Intel-based Linux systems)

- For Rowhammer, our students attack one particular kind of DRAM that we have profiled and know works well with our machines

- Note that AMD's cache inclusion policy differs from Intel's- we only support Intel chips for now

Down the road I could see us moving to ARM for a few labs (perhaps a future PACMAN attack lab...?)