Intel playing gynmastics over vulnerability that leads to OS level patching that cuts performance. AMD not affected.

[Choze]

Well. The issue became public yesterday forcing disclosures today. It's a sever security issue on Intel CPU dating back to the 90's.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/

 

Not so amazing is the handling by most mainstream tech websites and pc gaming websites that look to be acting in Intel's interests so far by obfuscating information and confusing people.

The Register pushed a good update on this:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/intels_spin_the_registers_annotations/

The issue intel(and nearly everyone) have is that performance 'will' be affected by varying amounts for various tasks. Right now we dont know much, but home users should hopefully be less affected compared to power users and business. It will be interesting to see if things like disk encryption to video editing/streaming etc are affected.

 

 

Edited January 4, 2018 by Choze

[Nolan]

5-30% is the expected performance drop. Linux Kernal has already received patches showing that drop in typical server type activities. Gaming doesn’t seem as affected. 

ARM CPUs are also affected.

Intel has known of this for at least some time if the fact that their CEO sold all of his available stock just before the information became public and their share prices dropped. Looking forward to an SEC investigation into that. 

This really isn’t a good thing at all. I don’t fully understand what the implications full are but part of my understanding is that through the bug privileges can be elevated, which I’m guessing means a program can get in and give itself full access and privilege to anything it wants. 

[Choze]

Some database tests are getting 60% performance drop spikes...

It seems just one ARM CPU is involved. Likely in order to get higher performance.

 

Also Register are doing a great job so far: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/intels_spin_the_registers_annotations/

[Shorty]

Glad I switched to Ryzen recently

[V. Amoleo]

Very crappy that Intel has known about this for a while.  From a security point of view this is terrible and Intel deserves all the flak they're getting and going to get for it.  But at least Microsoft is on top of it with an emergency patch for their OSes and Intel are working on a firmware patch.

From a performance point of view though this isn't really going to effect us as consumers:

 

[Choze]

5 hours ago, V. Amoleo said:

Very crappy that Intel has known about this for a while.  From a security point of view this is terrible and Intel deserves all the flak they're getting and going to get for it.  But at least Microsoft is on top of it with an emergency patch for their OSes and Intel are working on a firmware patch.

From a performance point of view though this isn't really going to effect us as consumers:

 

Microsoft are on top of it by being dead last in applying a patch?

Also what do hardware unboxed have to do with 'consumers'?

Edited January 4, 2018 by Choze

[V. Amoleo]

Just now, Choze said:

Microsoft are on top of it by being dead last in applying a patch?

If you're gonna poke holes in what I said, go for that I said Intel are working on a fix firmware side   They've known longer than everyone else and still done nothing leaving it up to the OS and browser makers.  Hell they've known ages and still been releasing new chips with the hardware setup which makes this never 100% fixable via software.

You can't really give Microsoft a hard time considering they've released their public patch on the day the exploit was made public, with it already going through Insiders (beta) for a while.  Apple are yet to even comment about their plans for Mac OS and Safari.  Google aren't patching Chrome until the end of the month.

[Choze]

10 minutes ago, V. Amoleo said:

If you're gonna poke holes in what I said, go for that I said Intel are working on a fix firmware side   They've known longer than everyone else and still done nothing leaving it up to the OS and browser makers.  Hell they've known ages and still been releasing new chips with the hardware setup which makes this never 100% fixable via software.

You can't really give Microsoft a hard time considering they've released their public patch on the day the exploit was made public, with it already going through Insiders (beta) for a while.  Apple are yet to even comment about their plans for Mac OS and Safari.  Google aren't patching Chrome until the end of the month.

Apple patched last year, in early December.

 

edit: lets see how the companies handle it but Intel certainly have tried to throw everyone under the bus and no one wants to upset Intel.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Choze

[V. Amoleo]

17 minutes ago, Choze said:

Lets see how the companies handle it but Intel certainly have tried to throw everyone under the bus and no one wants to upset Intel.

Definitely.  I'm already miffed with Intel's marketing-esque response and that they're the last ones who seem to be doing anything to help mitigate.  And I'm very annoyed that they knew this could happen with the way they design their hardware.  But I bet they'll still push the second round of Coffee Lakes out the door over the next couple of months.

[Dufniall]

Yeah insane, especially Intel's lukewarm response. I really hope this hurts them a bit to give AMD some more marketshare, and even give Qualcomm a chance with their WOS program. The processor market has always been way too one-sided.