I am from Intel, and I thought I would give you our perspective. Months ago, we addressed a processor issue by providing a BIOS update for our customers that in no way affects system performance. We publicly documented this as an erratum in April. All processors from all companies have errata, and Intel has a well-known errata communication process to inform our customers and the public. Keep in mind the probability of encountering this issue is low. Specification Updates for the affected processors are available at
http://developer.intel.com.
All errata are thoroughly investigated for issues and vulnerabilities, should they have any we fix them, usually through a microcode update. We feel we’ve resolved the issue and were open about it with customers and then publicly publishing it, but this is a good venue for ideas on how we could do better or more. I am interested in any constructive comments...