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Intel bug incoming? Meltdown and Spectre exploits

WYNIR0 said:
Anyone know if this impacts the IBM POWER 8 / 9 CPUs? Can't seem to find anything relating.
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It effects x86. I assume that includes x86_64 as well.

This has got some good info.

And this is the follow up article.

Page tables is the problem. If the kernel the IBM CPUs use uses page tables then it might be vulnerable.

Surely IBM will issue a statement if so and firmware updates.

S390 is unaffected.
 
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SiDeards73 said:
Pretty sure that MS patch just fixes one of the exploits, and 99% of gaming is not going to be affected as it doesnt really delve into the part of the system that the patch addresses... however reportedly Denuvo will take a hammering, and potentially MMORPG type games could take a hammering, so could a lot of online gaming that is reliant on cloud computing etc.
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Check out the Computerbase.de and hardwareLUXX results when compared to the Hardware Unboxed ones. They used a Core i7 7700K and Core i7 3960X and saw worse drops,whilst the Core i7 8700K based system didn't really see any changes in performance.

Plus the games they tested are based on engines which can thread reasonably well - there are plenty of open world games based on older engines like Fallout 4 and ARMA III which tend to be more I/O limited,so if this is affected it might also drop performance.

This is why I think it will be older generation Intel CPUs and games based on older engines which could be affected more - I do hope some websites test a range of games and also using a mixture of new and older CPU models to see if this is the case or not!
 
alphaomega16 said:
Well I hope Intel are going to start cutting the price of their processors if we are not going to get advertised performance.
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Like's been stated it's not really desktop perf that will be the problem, It's the server space where they will be hit, it's also where the main ££££ is made too
 
The upside of all of this is Intel may actually try and push the frontiers again with regards to CPU design, they may have to move away from their current architecture and redesign further to avoid this type of stuff.. i guess they potentially already have addressed some of the issues with Coffeelake etc if as Cat says above the performance hit is worse on the older platforms already? This may actually push their next gen back if this issue was not in the forefront when they designed the new arch, or bring it forward if it was known about...

Dunno really, but coupled with AMD's re emergence into the sector, and Intel now about to lose a lot of face in the Data center / enterprise etc, they may need to re-establish themselves in the desktop market to gain trust again.
 
It would be good is someone can find (or do) some benchmarks on AMD processors after the Windows patch. We know that an 'unpatch' was applied to Linux to exempt them from the workaround. But I don't think we've had confirmation that MS didn't apply the original patch to simply workaround all CPU's regardless of vendor?
 
Assume work computers will be dealt with, my main rig runs an R7 1700 but my HTPC (N54L) must be running an Intel CPU.

So do I need to install the Windows patch (Win8 I think)? Play it safe and delink my accounts from the affected machine?
 
So how are firmware patches pushed for Intel products? Do you just need to update the UEFI for your motherboard or does Windows update it for you or do you need to download a patch from the Intel website or what?
 
Cromulent said:
So how are firmware patches pushed for Intel products? Do you just need to update the UEFI for your motherboard or does Windows update it for you or do you need to download a patch from the Intel website or what?
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Bonjour said:
Are chip firmware updates pushed through Windows Update?
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Microcode updates for CPUs are generally available via a system UEFI upgrade I recall.
I think they can also be delivered via Windows Update but not sure if that method is used by many manufacturers.
 
Microsoft says that only systems with compatible antivirus applications installed are being offered the emergency patches. They don’t provide any further details to name the antivirus products considered to be incompatible, but say that “during our testing process, we uncovered that some third-party applications have been making unsupported calls into Windows kernel memory that cause stop errors (also known as bluescreen errors) to occur.”
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This raises a couple of questions:
  1. What Anti-virus products will work correctly following Microsoft's "fix".
  2. What "unsupported calls into Windows kernel memory" have these programs been making and why? Have they known about this bug for longer than Google?
 
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