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News Intel CPUs hit by major hardware security flaw

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by bit-tech, 3 Jan 2018.

  1. bit-tech

    bit-tech Supreme Overlord Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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    Read more
     
  2. meandmymouth

    meandmymouth Multimodder

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    It might finally be time to switch to AMD.
     
  3. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    Depending on workload, the performance impact can be absolutely nothing. Unless your workload is absolutely hammering syscalls, then you're probably not going to be affected to a measurable degree.
    A big headache for servers, but for desktop use unlikely to cause any problems.
     
  4. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    That certainly appears to be the case for Linux but it maybe a little hasty to extrapolate that to Windows as it's my understand the way Linux and Windows deal with drivers maybe markedly different, in that Linux runs drivers in user space so something like games that depend on drivers doesn't do much, if any, context switching whereas the picture for Windows drivers is less clear.

    I know nothing about driver development for Windows though so maybe the context switching is minimal.

    Microsoft's documentation on the subject says the following...
     
  5. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Hence "can result" - i.e. "its implementation can result in a performance loss and where such a performance loss occurs it is between five and 30 percent depending on workload." Sorry if I didn't phrase that bit very clearly!
     
  6. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    Windows has had user-mode drivers since Windows Vista a decade ago. The big switch was what people threw a fit about when manufacturers declined to update their drivers to maintain compatibility.
     
  7. Krikkit

    Krikkit All glory to the hypnotoad! Super Moderator

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    Slight typo. :)
     
  8. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    It's had partial user-mode drivers, there's still large portions of drivers handled in Kernel-mode.
     
  9. Otis1337

    Otis1337 aka - Ripp3r

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    AMD is not effected but will suffer the same performance hit due to the patch. its been confirmed now
     
  10. gosh

    gosh Minimodder

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    i would be interested for bit-tech to run benchmarks on their test rig pre and post patch, just to see if any games are actually affected
     
  11. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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  12. gosh

    gosh Minimodder

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    "To be clear, the security research team identified three variants targeting speculative execution," AMD said in a statement to Axios. "The threat and the response to the three variants differ by microprocessor company, and AMD is not susceptible to all three variants. Due to differences in AMD's architecture, we believe there is a near zero risk to AMD processors at this time. We expect the security research to be published later today and will provide further updates at that time."

    don't see how that article suggests AMD are affected too, guess since the vulnerability hasn't been released for obvious reasons that may yet change.
     
  13. Risky

    Risky Modder

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    It is worth including the sentence from the article before your quote:
     
  14. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    Also i did say ARM, not AMD
     
  15. jb0

    jb0 Minimodder

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    There's actually TWO vulnerabilities.
    https://meltdownattack.com

    One "only" hits every Intel part since Pentium Pro(Itanium and pre-2013 Atoms excepted). The other hits AMD, Intel, and ARM.
    Both have supervillain names.
     
    Last edited: 4 Jan 2018
  16. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    How lucky it was for the Inel CEO to sell all those shares he had to take him down to the 250,000 bare minimum he needs under his employment agreement before all this broke.
     
    MLyons likes this.
  17. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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  18. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    AMD is not susceptible to Meltdown. ARM, AMD, Intel is to Spectre. Likely custom versions of ARM cores too.
     
  19. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    Official statement from AMD on how each variant effects them.
    • Variant One Bounds Check Bypass Resolved by software / OS updates to be made available by system vendors and manufacturers. Negligible performance impact expected.
    • Variant Two Branch Target Injection Differences in AMD architecture mean there is a near zero risk of exploitation of this variant. Vulnerability to Variant 2 has not been demonstrated on AMD processors to date.
    • Variant Three Rogue Data Cache Load Zero AMD vulnerability due to AMD architecture differences.
    Official statement from ARM listing what models are effected.

    No statement from Intel about what variants effect what CPUs as of yet.
     
  20. Chicken76

    Chicken76 Minimodder

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    So what can we do, dust off those old Pentiums and K6s? I think 32-bit linux and Win98 should still be running well on them.
     
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