Massive security hole in CPU's incoming?Official Meltdown/Spectre Discussion Thread

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Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Gregory Bryant, manager of Intel's Client Computing Group confirmed that they will be intercepting future products and future designs to implement silicon/hardware level fixes, such products will be seen in 2018. He also said that fixing the issues was the first priority and reiterated the 90% 5 yr claim by end of week then all by end of month, however he also said that they will be working with OEMs to go even further back in time to push out patches. Fixing the bugs was the first priority and when that is sorted they will be focusing on performance mitigation to lower overhead and improve performance as much as possible. This was all from a JPMorgan Analyst call, recording is not up just yet, will link when it is.
Do you work for Intel ? How else would you get all this information before the rest of the world.
 

Dayman1225

Golden Member
Aug 14, 2017
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Do you work for Intel ? How else would you get all this information before the rest of the world.

I said at the bottom, this was all from a JPMorgan Analyst call, recording is not up just yet, will link when it is. It was a streamed webcast first
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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I said at the bottom, this was all from a JPMorgan Analyst call, recording is not up just yet, will link when it is. It was a streamed webcast first
So do you work for JPMorgan ? or Intel ?
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Reading this makes me thinking if these vulnerabilities are used by MS to speed up their Win10 adoption.
This is interesting to me, quoted from that article:
Intel found similar results. Using top-of-the line Core i7-8700K consumer CPU with six-cores and 12 threats, a fast Intel 600p M.2 NVMe SSD, the company could still see a ~6% slowdown across the board in SYSmark benchmarks, which each individual benchmark ranging from 2%-14%.

So the 8700k DOES loose 6%. Sure brings it closer to Ryzen 1800x
 
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goldstone77

Senior member
Dec 12, 2017
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OK, thanks, just couldn't figure out how you always find out this stuff first.
You can go to the main website of just about any company listed on the market and find their investor's page. It will provide links to investor related information.
 

PrivateCeralion

Junior Member
Feb 24, 2017
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Qutoe from the Public Webcast:
"Nothing is perfect and I think what's important is how you handle and how you partner. And I think that's gone well so far and you got to appreciate it."
"Nothing is perfect" - Intel
:D
 
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Greyguy1948

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Nov 29, 2008
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For ARM Cortex-A75 should be most affected by both. How about Apple's modified ARM-cpus? They are not standard-ARM....
 

coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
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Intel finally decided it knows how to issue a proper press release on the matter, focusing on ensuring customers they will get support within a reasonable time frame.

I fail to see how a balanced response like the one above could have caused any more harm to the company than this initial denial did.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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See my post above. It's not just Epic seeing those CPU utilization spikes versus "baseline" load.

Yeah, I just listed Epic as one example of real-world slowdowns thanks to (mostly) Meltdown.

Gregory Bryant, manager of Intel's Client Computing Group confirmed that they will be intercepting future products and future designs to implement silicon/hardware level fixes, such products will be seen in 2018.

Um.

How?

What products?

Does he seriously expect us to believe that they can bugfix an existing design like Coffeelake or Skylake-X to eliminate Meltdown and Spectre in hardware? Much less interrupt a current development cycle without imposing major delays?

Next up from Intel will be . . . Whiskeylake and I guess Cascade Lake. I just don't see them being able to fix the bugs in hardware AND launch those chips in 2018.
 
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jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
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Next up from Intel will be . . . Whiskeylake and I guess Cascade Lake. I just don't see them being able to fix the bugs in hardware AND launch those chips in 2018.

Probably just Cascade Lake, and I imagine that will slip now to the end of 2018. Is that enough time? That'd be a year. I agree that does sound tough.

If Whiskey Lake has the fixes then for sure Intel knew about it.
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
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This is interesting to me, quoted from that article:


So the 8700k DOES loose 6%. Sure brings it closer to Ryzen 1800x
But again, it's a benchmark. It's probably the benchmark that looks the best. Benchmarks are merely interesting.
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
28,520
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Gregory Bryant, manager of Intel's Client Computing Group confirmed that they will be intercepting future products and future designs to implement silicon/hardware level fixes, such products will be seen in 2018. He also said that fixing the issues was the first priority and reiterated the 90% 5 yr claim by end of week then all by end of month, however he also said that they will be working with OEMs to go even further back in time to push out patches. Fixing the bugs was the first priority and when that is sorted they will be focusing on performance mitigation to lower overhead and improve performance as much as possible. This was all from a JPMorgan Analyst call, recording is not up just yet, will link when it is.
So that's more than once that Intel has said they have a hardware fix going already and that chips will be out this year that are not vulnerable.
 

PotatoWithEarsOnSide

Senior member
Feb 23, 2017
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They're hardly gonna say "Thanks for letting us know about our longstanding fundamental design flaw. We're still gonna be shipping them without a fix, coz, you know, they're working exactly as intended. At Intel, your security is important to us, and that's why we've been selling incremental performance improvements year after year, and not once using any opportunity to fix our design flaws. But it's OK, AMD suck*.
*disclaimer: our fundamental design flaw is why we're ahead of the competition."

Even though that is precisely what they'll do.

Edit:
The disclaimer is the crux of the matter really. At the time that these architecture changes came about, the trade-off between performance and security would have been one that defined the future of the industry. Maybe at the time it was considered worth it, and in hindsight it clearly was; Intel soared ahead in CPU performance, and has stayed there pretty much ever since. As has been hinted at earlier in this thread, no doubt the knowledge of this issue was there at the time, but has subsequently been lost, whether through staff turnover or whatever.
Now, it'd be nigh on impossible to convince a court to look at the industry in a proper historic context like this, so it's not likely to lead to any successful lawsuits. Intel pulled a blinder; traded security for performance, and it didn't get discovered until well after their dominance was ensured. Give whoever made that call a big fat paycheck, coz he's earned it.
 
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dark zero

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Jun 2, 2015
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But again, it's a benchmark. It's probably the benchmark that looks the best. Benchmarks are merely interesting.
But this is just the first patch... I heavily doubt that it solves the problem... The performance hit will be bigger for each patch is applied.