Intel bug incoming? Meltdown and Spectre exploits

[Steampunk]

That currently looks like where the cut off point is, so only Haswell and newer look likely to receive Intel fixes.

It won't make any difference if the motherboard manufacturers won't do the work to integrate the BIOS fixes. At the moment, Asus have only committed to going back as far as X99, and only one of those. That's pretty poor from one of the world's biggest motherboard manufacturers.

Another example of sub-standard customer service from Asus.

 

[thenewoc]

Ah, so no Ivy Bridge? that would be a shame because looking around i see a lot of Ivy Bridge users.

Well Intel's quote in that article refers to products introduced in the last 5 years rather than those that were available to buy in the past 5 years. Very little information available at the moment, hopefully when they start releasing fixes they'll clarify it more.

 

[thenewoc]

It won't make any difference if the motherboard manufacturers won't do the work to integrate the BIOS fixes. At the moment, Asus have only committed to going back as far as X99, and only one of those. That's pretty poor from one of the world's biggest motherboard manufacturers.

Another example of sub-standard customer service from Asus.

At least if the CPU fix is released the community might sort the bios update.

 

[ubersonic]

At the moment, Asus have only committed to going back as far as X99, and only one of those.

Not surprising, they cut off X79 support ~1 year after launching their last X79 board.

At least if the CPU fix is released the community might sort the bios update.

Then we can all fix our security issue by installing a third party BIOS from a modding group made by people with names like Phant0m and T3rr0ri5t

 

[opethdisciple]

Significant slowdown then it seems particularly for CPUs haswell and older and OS's older than windows 10.

 

[QlimaxUK]

 

[Rroff]

For most people's uses using a patched browser will probably make them as secure as makes any odds - if something is executing on your machine software wise then all bets are off the table anyhow - even Windows 10 UAC, etc. isn't particularly impregnable so if something wants to get in once its already running on the system there are easier compromises than these vulnerabilities.

Bit of a different story for things like Virtual Machines and exposed servers, etc.

 

[thenewoc]

Not surprising, they cut off X79 support ~1 year after launching their last X79 board.



Then we can all fix our security issue by installing a third party BIOS from a modding group made by people with names like Phant0m and T3rr0ri5t

Well yes I get your point lol but what else can people do. We used to have a small number of community folk over on MSI forum that were priceless in terms of beta bios releases and motherboard settings.

 

[humbug]

Significant slowdown then it seems particularly for CPUs haswell and older and OS's older than windows 10.

I'm on Haswell.

 

[QlimaxUK]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/01/09/amd-spectre-meltdown/#more-506967

 

[humbug]

Windows 10 running on Skylake, Kaby Lake or newer CPU show benchmarks show “single-digit slowdowns”, but most users shouldn’t expect to see noticeable slowdowns
Windows 10 running on Haswell or older CPUs “show more significant slowdowns” and “some users will notice a decrease in system performance”
Windows 7 or Windows 8 running on Haswell or older CPUs means “most users will notice a decrease in system performance

“show more significant slowdowns” IE more than Single digit, double digit?

That's pretty sucky Intel.

 

[humbug]

Look at Intel here being all 'statesman' the bare faced cheek of it pretending they are just doing their part in helping an industry with a problem.

And uploaded by The Verge who earlier on in the day wrote an article that reads very clearly as if the patch was bricking all AMD CPU's.

PR spinning at its finest.

 

[SiDeards73]

“show more significant slowdowns” IE more than Single digit, double digit?

That's pretty sucky Intel.

Ditched my Haswell 4770k for a Ryzen, they were pretty much identical in IPC, not anymore it seems lol.. so glad i upgraded when i did, yep, its definitely an upgrade now

 

[stockhausen]

Significant slowdown then it seems particularly for CPUs haswell and older and OS's older than windows 10.

Microsoft are never ones to miss an opportunity to encourage suckers to upgrade their OS . . . and by the by to invest in a shiny new CPU from their mates at Intel

 

[opethdisciple]

I'm on Haswell.

Seriously tho, the average home user isn't going to notice a scooby do. And that goes for gaming too outside of benchmarks.

 

[synixx]

Look at Intel here being all 'statesman' the bare faced cheek of it pretending they are just doing their part in helping an industry with a problem.

And uploaded by The Verge who earlier on in the day wrote an article that reads very clearly as if the patch was bricking all AMD CPU's.

PR spinning at its finest.

I laughed so hard I had to leave the room at the first 20 secs of that video! Please welcome Briannnnnnnnnnn Krzanichhhhhhhhhhh! *Brian makes a feeble attempt at running, don't think he wants to be on stage....*

I wouldn't want to be either after this!

Followed by a fairly dumbed down response to meltdown and spectre to project intel in a good light. Industry wide problem, doing everything we can, you'll all forget about this soon because...

Dramatic Pause

"When we come together like this, there are endless possiblities..."

Well I for one am convinced this is a non issue now. Close thread please.

 

[thenewoc]

Look at Intel here being all 'statesman' the bare faced cheek of it pretending they are just doing their part in helping an industry with a problem.

And uploaded by The Verge who earlier on in the day wrote an article that reads very clearly as if the patch was bricking all AMD CPU's.

PR spinning at its finest.

The best bit was "from a PC centric company to a data centric company" not for long if they don't sort their ****.

Seriously none of what's in that video means jack if you can't secure your architecture.

 

[jt_uk]

Microsoft are never ones to miss an opportunity to encourage suckers to upgrade their OS . . . and by the by to invest in a shiny new CPU from their mates at Intel

Guilty. Upgraded from Win 7 to Win10.

 

[kitfit1]

Seriously tho, the average home user isn't going to notice a scooby do. And that goes for gaming too outside of benchmarks.

The average home user dosn't frequent forums like OCUK. The average home user buys a laptop, PC or tablet from high street retailers. The average home user has no idea whatsoever what a "Bios" is or how to find it let alone update it. The average home user turns a PC on, uses it and turns it off.
When that PC slows to a crawl, off course they are going to notice a difference...................anyone who thinks they won't notice is living in denial, cloud cookoo land or both.

 

[AmateurExpert]

OS and software updates are sufficient to fix Spectre (Variant 1)

This matches with Google's advice.

it's the microcode updates to fix Spectre (Variant 2) on Intel CPUs that are causing most of the performance issues, not the OS updates

I've seen the benchmarks too - the hit is non-trivial in some cases. On Windows 10 the OS patch for branch target injection (Variant 2) is inactive without the microcode update, and according to the PS script this seems to be the case for both Intel & AMD systems. Has there been any news on any AMD microcode updates?

On Linux, the preferred mitigation for Variant 2 is the application of Retpoline to OS (and hypervisor where applicable), system libraries and user applications; the performance impact is mixed - with one exception (but there are going to be others not yet benchmarked) the hit is a bit worse on Intel architectures than on AMD.

they don't actually explain why they believe that the "security holes will devastate Intel’s market share" and presumably Intel's share price

They explain that in the subscriber-only part of that article, so the rest of us will just have to guess.

Yes, but the GPU hardware itself is not vulnerable, this is mitigating a CPU vulnerability. I thought QlimaxUK might have got the wrong end of the stick and was thinking the GPU hardware was vulnerable.

You're correct, but I did say Nvidia's drivers needed updating because they are compiled binaries that are vulnerable to Spectre - I didn't mention the GPU hardware because indeed it's got nothing to do with it.

Microsoft like most software these days have a "we know what you want for your system better than you do" Like installing very old GPU drivers over newer ones already installed, this without you even knowing about it let alone asking your permission.
...
So what we all end up with is dumbed down dictatorial systems.

<smugmode>Unless you are fortunate enough to run Linux</smugmode>

poultry offer of support from Intel

If only they really were giving out chicken wings as compensation...