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Another Intel CPU vulnerability

Google have taken the step of disabling Hyperthreading in Chrome OS in response (though have provided a flag to turn it back on if you desire). The Ubuntu team are also recommending disabling it. I don't suppose many people using desktops for gaming will do so, but it does seem at this point that it's swiss cheese in terms of security. One of the researchers involved says a ground-up redesign is needed.
Protecting against the attack is also not easy. According to the researchers, this is a fundamental problem with the design of the chip. "Chips really have to go back to the drawing board," writes Herbert Bos, one of the researchers, in an email. "But the number of people at companies like Intel who deal with security at this level can really be counted on two fingers."
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Dutch link

/edit/ Also a claim from Apple that full mitigation could decrease performance by up to 40%. :eek:
 
So Intel now will have a flagship 8c/8t mainstream chip whereas AMD is about to release a 16c/32t chip lol. And Zen 3 will apparently have 4 threads per core. Intel be in such trouble.
 
Ohh what crap intel now find themselves in, serves them right.

Benchmark tables for upcoming cpu's over the next year or so might be rather worrying looking for team blue, still something needs to hold up the bottom of the table and for too long it was all red.
 
Wow another one!?!? I wonder how well bulldozer does now Vs 2500k etc for those who didn't have the cash to uograde:D:D also would be very interesting to see how Ryzen now holds up against the 9900k
 
beany_bot said:
So Intel now will have a flagship 8c/8t mainstream chip whereas AMD is about to release a 16c/32t chip lol. And Zen 3 will apparently have 4 threads per core. Intel be in such trouble.
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Or, as per the meme I made for the other thread about this, my expensive Core i7 8700k just became a very expensive i5; even after already losing about 30% performance post-purchase thanks to Spectre and Meltdown 'mitigation'. Roll on the 3850X. :p

ETA:

smilingcrow said:
Very good timing for AMD with Zen 2 to be announced hopefully in less than 2 weeks.
For some sitting on the fence this could be the final straw!
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Indeed. Lisa Su must be rubbing her hands together with glee. I was already planning to jump to Ryzen, and those in the know have been recommending HT be disabled for some time (see: Theo Radt of OpenBSD/openssl/openssh fame). This though, will I think be the push the mainstream needed to move over to team red in larger numbers. Funny, to me, how this gets so much attention but SPOILER (which is again silicon level and can't be mitigated at all) barely raises an eyebrow.

On the plus side, at least the Intel die hard fans on here mean I'll still get decent resale on my 8Pack 8700K in the MM. :p
 
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FYI. OpenBSD has deactivated Intel HT support since 19 June 2018. Because they cannot guarantee security, of what is actually the most secure OS used by security companies!!!!
 
"Intel unveiled yet another speculative execution side-channel flaw in its processors. The vulnerability affects most of the company’s processor SKUs, except the 8th and 9th generation chips, which Intel said includes hardware mitigations against this flaw." - So are the 8*** and 9*** series intel chips immune? The article suggests that it is all chips with multithreading apart from Whiskey lake and atom - it makes intels comment a little disingenuous.

It sucks to see Intel this hamstrung, I guess this is what happens when you sit on fundamentally the same architecture for this long - but I do feel for users that are on an older platform and now have a choice about really gimping performance or making an unplanned upgrade. I want AMD to take the lead as it is healthy for competition and they have done something that really pushes computing forward. This is going to be a massive push for anyone on 7 series and below intel chips to jump ship - and potentially give AMD Epyc and Ryzen 3*** an even bigger push moving forward.
 
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