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

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24601

Golden Member
Jun 10, 2007
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Yes my compute work is heavily dependent on RAM and VRAM. In the machine vision applications, everything resides on the VRAM.
I would imagine you could get around it simply by making every process 100% kernal mode so that there isn't any thrashing at all.

Obviously that turns off all the inherent security of running things in user mode but whatevs.

All this linux style "kernel mode" "user mode" crap annoys the crap out of me in windows anyways, so maybe i'll just run everything as kernel mode if performance gets really bad.
 

IEC

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Jun 10, 2004
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Fixes out for most (but not all) Surface devices:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...ct-against-speculative-execution-side-channel

Cloud storage providers aren't happy with the performance impacts of Spectre and Meltdown patches (Hot Hardware, 10th January 2018 article):
"If Intel doesn’t step up and do something to make this right then we’re going to have to punish them in the marketplace by not purchasing their products," added Adam Stern, chief executive of Infinitely Virtual, a cloud-based vendor that currently only uses Intel processors.
https://hothardware.com/news/meltdown-spectre-chip-flaws-cloud-companies-looking-intel-alternatives

Servers running Microsoft's Storage Spaces Direct are seeing 20%+ negative performance impacts in some cases (600K IOPS reduction from patches in screenshot):
https://twitter.com/NZ_BenThomas/status/950271094803480577
 

dark zero

Platinum Member
Jun 2, 2015
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I wonder how this patches will solve or aggravate the problem the processors are trying to solve.
 

TempAcc99

Member
Aug 30, 2017
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Then again, if 10% cpu loss drops you out of the comfort zone, then you probably needed a faster CPU/system anyway.

If you are already running the fastest proccessor, you can't get another 10%. And while 10% seems small i repeat what someone replied to you couple pages back already. 10% is 2 generations of CPUs. Your 7700k now about as fast as 4790k pre-patch. Or we need to wait another 2 years to get the performance back. (Or buy AMD).

EDIT:

You are greatly underestimating the impact this will have on intel, also on consumer side because AMD will in April release a new CPUs. Intel has nothing to counter them. IF Pinnacle Ridge gets 10% clock-bump, bye, bye intel. 4.4 ghz 8-core vs 4.8 ghz 6-core with a crippling patch? No brainer.
 
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LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
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If you are already running the fastest proccessor, you can't get another 10%. And while 10% seems small i repeat what someone replied to you couple pages back already. 10% is 2 generations of CPUs. Your 7700k now about as fast as 4790k pre-patch. Or we need to wait another 2 years to get the performance back. (Or buy AMD).

EDIT:

You are greatly underestimating the impact this will have on intel, also on consumer side because AMD will in April release a new CPUs. Intel has nothing to counter them. IF Pinnacle Ridge gets 10% clock-bump, bye, bye intel. 4.4 ghz 8-core vs 4.8 ghz 6-core with a crippling patch? No brainer.



Do you know how many times there have been claims that a mistake or a new product means huge trouble or death for "big leading company X"?
No brainer indeed.
For one, Intel would be making rubber dog turds in China by now...
 

piesquared

Golden Member
Oct 16, 2006
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Yep its why Enron is still the powerhouse it is today!

Yep, or Yahoo or Nokia or Blackberry or Nortel or Sears or or or or. There's many examples. People don't understand how quickly the world moves today and how quickly yesterday is forgotten.
 

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
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Yep, or Yahoo or Nokia or Blackberry or Nortel or Sears or or or or. There's many examples. People don't understand how quickly the world moves today and how quickly yesterday is forgotten.

Nor do people understand how to analyze those failures, apparently. Those companies all had years of failures. This incident will certainly affect Intel, but if any of you seriously thinks this will kill Intel or give AMD 50% marketshare practically overnight, it shows more about your lack of understanding of the market than anything else.
 

realibrad

Lifer
Oct 18, 2013
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Nor do people understand how to analyze those failures, apparently. Those companies all had years of failures. This incident will certainly affect Intel, but if any of you seriously thinks this will kill Intel or give AMD 50% marketshare practically overnight, it shows more about your lack of understanding of the market than anything else.

Well if anyone is saying that Intel will be dead soon then sure. But, this is a big misstep and it will effect Intel greatly. The stock has taken a hit and will continue to do so as they lose out on market share. If the CEO does get investigated that too will effect the stock. If companies realize they are better off buying AMD for their next servers, they have allowed AMD into a market which Intel makes massive profits from.

Its not the end of Intel by any means, but its not good either. If Intel does not adapt to a competitive AMD while continuing to make missteps it will be the end of Intel in the future.
 

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
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Well if anyone is saying that Intel will be dead soon then sure. But, this is a big misstep and it will effect Intel greatly. The stock has taken a hit and will continue to do so as they lose out on market share. If the CEO does get investigated that too will effect the stock. If companies realize they are better off buying AMD for their next servers, they have allowed AMD into a market which Intel makes massive profits from.

Its not the end of Intel by any means, but its not good either. If Intel does not adapt to a competitive AMD while continuing to make missteps it will be the end of Intel in the future.

Right, but my point is it will take years (and maybe decades) of continued missteps by Intel and flawless execution by AMD to sink Intel. Both companies will make missteps and both will have triumphs, so everyone is being a little unrealistic with calls of Intel’s impending demise.

Remember, AMD survived what was largely a decade of being irrelevant and had mistake after mistake during that time. Intel is far larger and has far more resources.
 

realibrad

Lifer
Oct 18, 2013
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Right, but my point is it will take years (and maybe decades) of continued missteps by Intel and flawless execution by AMD to sink Intel. Both companies will make missteps and both will have triumphs, so everyone is being a little unrealistic with calls of Intel’s impending demise.

Remember, AMD survived what was largely a decade of being irrelevant and had mistake after mistake during that time. Intel is far larger and has far more resources.

Agreed.
 

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
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Right, but my point is it will take years (and maybe decades) of continued missteps by Intel and flawless execution by AMD to sink Intel. Both companies will make missteps and both will have triumphs, so everyone is being a little unrealistic with calls of Intel’s impending demise.

Remember, AMD survived what was largely a decade of being irrelevant and had mistake after mistake during that time. Intel is far larger and has far more resources.
Also keep in mind that AMD as a smaller company is more flexible to larger losses in sales than Intel is. A swing from being profitable to a loss for AMD can be 100-200 million dollars. AMD has lasted nearly decades losing that much a quarter. Intel even with even a 10% loss in sales can be well over a Billion dollars in lost revenue. If Impacted large enough in quick enough in between screwups can lead to quickly being unable to manage the losses, the staff cuts, the factory shutdowns, the R & D expenses cut, to stem the losses can be pretty large. Luckily Intel has a bunch of non-primary revenue businesses they can sell off if that time were to come. I doubt this is a sign of the end of Intel any time soon, but Intel isn't nearly as stable as the image they portray.
 
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piesquared

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Nor do people understand how to analyze those failures, apparently. Those companies all had years of failures. This incident will certainly affect Intel, but if any of you seriously thinks this will kill Intel or give AMD 50% marketshare practically overnight, it shows more about your lack of understanding of the market than anything else.

Nobody said anything about overnight. Nor are any of those companies examples of overnight failures. But they are examples of how quickly companies can go from top to bottom from a single product or incident, particularly Blackberry. What i'm saying, and i think many others are also is that the curve always has a peak, and we may be at a point in time that intel has hit it's peak and the downward inflection will start. Just think back to all those companies listed, and the point at which the downward spiral began is clear to see. The combination of their 10nm struggles and affliction to Meltdown may very well be the point at which intel's downward momentum starts.
 

goldstone77

Senior member
Dec 12, 2017
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Please note that these are benchmarks from Intel!
DTQY1U3WkAABVFw.jpg:large

https://newsroom.intel.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2018/01/Blog-Benchmark-Table.pdf
 

dark zero

Platinum Member
Jun 2, 2015
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Nor do people understand how to analyze those failures, apparently. Those companies all had years of failures. This incident will certainly affect Intel, but if any of you seriously thinks this will kill Intel or give AMD 50% marketshare practically overnight, it shows more about your lack of understanding of the market than anything else.
You didn't saw how IBM lost their marketshare.... There are a beggining and takes years to make effect. And this seems to be the beggining for Intel. If they continue like that, they will end like IBM.
I cant say it's related but Visual Studio Profiler reboots now after the latest MS patch.

https://developercommunity.visualst...he-profiler-leads-to-computer-restart-af.html

I can deal with a little slowdown. Reboots. Not so much.
Damn Microsoft... Why now this? Making an stable program totally unstable?
 

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
33,656
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Nobody said anything about overnight. Nor are any of those companies examples of overnight failures. But they are examples of how quickly companies can go from top to bottom from a single product or incident, particularly Blackberry. What i'm saying, and i think many others are also is that the curve always has a peak, and we may be at a point in time that intel has hit it's peak and the downward inflection will start. Just think back to all those companies listed, and the point at which the downward spiral began is clear to see. The combination of their 10nm struggles and affliction to Meltdown may very well be the point at which intel's downward momentum starts.

Intel is posting record profits and revenue and has done so, to my knowledge, every quarter for years. The thing you guys are forgetting is that Blackberry and the other companies mentioned had several competitors with better products. Intel does not face that competition, even with Ryzen. Let's assume that Coffee Lake takes a 10% performance hit with the patches and Ryzen doesn't - CFL will still be ahead in performance in all likelihood due to greater IPC and far superior OC headroom. Even with a 10% boost in clock, I am not sure the next version of Ryzen will be able to overcome this advantage. At best, I see it drawing even but this will have little affect on corporate purchases IMO.
 

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
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You didn't saw how IBM lost their marketshare.... There are a beggining and takes years to make effect. And this seems to be the beggining for Intel. If they continue like that, they will end like IBM.

Damn Microsoft... Why now this? Making an stable program totally unstable?

To be fair IBM struggled (not really but in the PC market) because they were in middle of a lengthy anti-trust investigation when Anti-trust cases and Monopolies couldn't buy themselves out trouble. They were so handcuffed in fear of getting split like Bell that they basically sacrificed the consumer and small business markets to make sure everything else IBM stayed together.
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Intel is posting record profits and revenue and has done so, to my knowledge, every quarter for years. The thing you guys are forgetting is that Blackberry and the other companies mentioned had several competitors with better products. Intel does not face that competition, even with Ryzen. Let's assume that Coffee Lake takes a 10% performance hit with the patches and Ryzen doesn't - CFL will still be ahead in performance in all likelihood due to greater IPC and far superior OC headroom. Even with a 10% boost in clock, I am not sure the next version of Ryzen will be able to overcome this advantage. At best, I see it drawing even but this will have little affect on corporate purchases IMO.
The server world is another story. Taking 20-30% hits on servers ? EPYC was already close and won a few benchmarks, and were cheaper. This could definitly be a boon for AMD, on a more profitable platform.
 
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IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
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You didn't saw how IBM lost their marketshare.... There are a beggining and takes years to make effect. And this seems to be the beggining for Intel. If they continue like that, they will end like IBM.

I didn't see how IBM lost marketshare? Really? I'm nearly 50 years old and was involved with computers in the 80s. I saw the entire thing firsthand.
 

IndyColtsFan

Lifer
Sep 22, 2007
33,656
687
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The server world is another story. Taking 20-30% hits on servers ? EPYC was already close and won a few benchmarks, and were cheaper. This could definitly be a boon for AMD, on a more profitable platform.

It could be, but as someone who has worked in Fortune 500 IT (including Fortune 20) and other companies for over two decades, I can tell you that I wouldn't count on it yet. Large IT departments (and infrastructure providers) are notoriously conservative and Intel fans. I can tell you that we have one of the largest infrastructure providers in the world and the patches are going on the servers without any hesitation.
 

Topweasel

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2000
5,436
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Intel is posting record profits and revenue and has done so, to my knowledge, every quarter for years. The thing you guys are forgetting is that Blackberry and the other companies mentioned had several competitors with better products. Intel does not face that competition, even with Ryzen. Let's assume that Coffee Lake takes a 10% performance hit with the patches and Ryzen doesn't - CFL will still be ahead in performance in all likelihood due to greater IPC and far superior OC headroom. Even with a 10% boost in clock, I am not sure the next version of Ryzen will be able to overcome this advantage. At best, I see it drawing even but this will have little affect on corporate purchases IMO.

Again it can if it's competitor offers a similar performance product at a cheaper price and you are dealing with an upwards of 30% performance reduction on your productive server environment and have to answer a million questions about how this might impact the CEO's, VP, HR's, and that annoying guy in sales that thinks he is the most important person in the world computers and if they are safe. Then you have to worry about all of your developer and engineer systems and hope their tasks aren't I/O driven enough for them to feel the effects. Then once all the dust settles you still have hundreds and thousands of machines that you have to worry about doing a FW update to. Which normally isn't a big deal but then again when you are dealing with that volume, murphy's law basically promises that not only will some fail the FW update and brick the system, it will probably happen to the worst people to have it happen to.

Meltdown might not be realistically a huge security risk at least for general business's. But man the headaches this has introduced to IT departments around the world is massive. That's not to say this is going to lead to mass exodus from Intel. But I wouldn't be surprised if the corporate reaction to this is larger than the consumer one.
 
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Topweasel

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Oct 19, 2000
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Why would anyone wish for a one company CPU monopoly again?
No one should. A lot of the stuff people like about AMD is due to their scrappy underdog nature with smaller more passionate team and a need to seperate themselves from the competition. You lose all of that if AMD were the Monopoly as well. Chances are they would be just as bad as Intel.

But there is something to be said about realizing when a company as big as Intel is starting to show cracks. The question is this when Intel tightens it's belt, roll up it's sleeve and reinvigorate themselves. Or do what a lot of large companies start to do when the struggle, which is ignore it because well they are so big and this doesn't mean much in the long run, they are the best and no one can come close.
 

DigDog

Lifer
Jun 3, 2011
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its

also, i'm seeing some of that good ol' AMD vs Intel thing.

Intel is BAD because big company, evil, cheaters, etc.
AMD good, nice guys, cheaper CPU, more speed for the money.

What do you think happens when AMD manages to come to the same level of market presence as Intel ?

I'm not saying that competition is bad, and i'm sure that if it shoudl happen, Intel would lower their prices and another long list of cool stuff, but i'm just as sure that AMD would stop trying and probably do what Intel does today: slow research, microimprovements, dodgy marketing, putting brand over product, market manipulation..

remember that AMD managed to sell those 3-core monstrosities .. somehow ..
 
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