Serious flaw in Intel chips

Patches being worked on, released soon. Possible slowdowns between 5%-30% as a result.

Which chips are these? The ones in newer or older computer models? or all of them?

They don't seem to say what chips are impacted but that architecture goes back to the 386 which could mean anything from late eighties onwards

As the article says, any Intel CPU from the last decade. And seeing as it 's a hardware fault that can't be addressed in microcode, that means it will be at least one CPU generation before it's fixed in the hardware. Details of the 9th generation Intel CPU's are already known, so the design is probably too far along to fix this in them, unless they delay them and go for a 9.5th generation

At least OSX apparently already includes code that prevents exploitation of the bug and AMD is unaffected, although the fix might slow them as well, if it's a quick & dirty hack.

As noted by Andrew_C, it appears to be all their chips, at least for the past 10 years.

Me, I'm an AMD guy. I guess AMD will be getting many more customers soon. Intel may - repeat may - have done their reputation irreparable harm.

It will be interesting to see the benchmarks once the patches have been rolled out, if the difference is marginal Intel might start dropping their prices. Also will need to keep an eye on the impact of hyper-threading on the performance loss since a context switch could impact the core rather than just the h/t.

This bug has been in there unnoticed for 10 years and is being fixed.

Pretty much high impact like the security problems in Windows, Mac, Unix and other platforms.

I am more worried about the security flaws which hackers might use and have not been identified. Could be in any CPU, OS, or app.

It can't be fixed, only patched round, and that's if it's patched. (it's hardware. The only fix is to rebuild and that's gonna take time.....)

Older OS like win7? Iffy if they'll patch that.....

I stopped my win updater. At least, I hope I did.

Ok 7 and 8 get patched next week it seems. 10, today.

Latest news is AMD and ARM chips are also at risk, to varying degrees. More info at the Reg:

Spectre and Meltdown

This made my N.Y. Times eNewsletter today --> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/business/computer-flaws.html

It also made one of my tech eNewsletters from ZDNet --> http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-meltdown-spectre-patches-if-you-havent-got-them-blame-your-antivirus/

Damn space-alien technology!

If you want to put your tin-foil hat on and go Conspiracy Theory-

It was put there at the insistence of the Three Letter Agencies so it could be used to spy on enemies, foreign and domestic !!!

According to his set of benchmarks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qZksorJAuY there should be no negative effects on rendering.

TheDarkerSideOfArt posted at 3:22PM Fri, 05 January 2018 - #4321688

SamTherapy posted at 3:12PM Fri, 05 January 2018 - #4321562

Latest news is AMD and ARM chips are also at risk, to varying degrees. More info at the Reg:

Spectre and Meltdown

Yeah but those are some chips on some phones (older samsung iphones...)and other older handheld devices running that Symbian OS,.not Computers. from the same page you linked further down

Meltdown does not affect any AMD processors.

Their "wording" is misleading probably just salty intel users...lol..just kidding I have/use Intel also. :(

Latest news is just about any processor made in the last 10 years is vulnerable but Intel more than the others. There's also news of Class Action lawsuits against Intel, by several very hacked off businesses, because of impacted performance, security "Issues" (how I hate that word's current usage) and time wasted on patching.

@ypvs - I know you're joking but for all the tinfoil hat crew out there... If the TLAs were really behind this, it wouldn't have been disclosed. You daft buggers.

Meltdown may not affect AMD chips but t'other one - Spectre - certainly does and is (so they say) harder to patch. Oh buggeration.

I expect these bugs are mainly problems for big servers like cloud servers, where a hacker could get access to LOTS of important info. The hack is complex and sort of statistical, requiring considerable knowledge of what the system is doing at the time. Ordinary computers wouldn't be worth the trouble, when there are millions of VASTLY easier ways to acquire money-related info.

ockham posted at 12:50PM Sat, 06 January 2018 - #4321720

I expect these bugs are mainly problems for big servers like cloud servers, where a hacker could get access to LOTS of important info. The hack is complex and sort of statistical, requiring considerable knowledge of what the system is doing at the time. Ordinary computers wouldn't be worth the trouble, when there are millions of VASTLY easier ways to acquire money-related info.

Ain't that the truth. Had my router hacked in December and the bastards emptied my bank account.

Rumors of the "fix" bricking some AMD machines... (Can't have an Intel c*ckup making AMD look good now, can we?)

https://betanews.com/2018/01/08/microsoft-meltdown-spectre-patch-bricks-amd-pcs/

moogal posted at 11:27PM Mon, 08 January 2018 - #4321883

Rumors of the "fix" bricking some AMD machines... (Can't have an Intel c*ckup making AMD look good now, can we?)

https://betanews.com/2018/01/08/microsoft-meltdown-spectre-patch-bricks-amd-pcs/

Also reported in the Reg:

AMD Bricked by fix

Yet more joy:

Oopsie