Intel CPU Design Flaw

[vapour]

News report:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/

Just want to see everyone's idea on the issue. Bad news for gamers as the impact can be 5-30% slow down after the security patch, and it affects all Intel CPUs, all OS. Don't know if customers can hold Intel accountable.

 

[delaro]

It's premature to really know the impact.

 

[Major_Trouble]

As the fix is to be implemented through software how secure is that anyway?

 

[shanetemple14]

I bought a brand new i5 7500 a few days ago and I am using it now and it sucks but all we can do is hope the highly skilled programmers can reduce the performance hit as much as possible. If you are running an older BIOS then maybe a new BIOS update will help to level out the performance hit from the patch with possible performance gains for the BIOS update.

Edit: I believe the patch will be released Tuesday by Microsoft so we can only hope.

 

[gasaraki]

We'll see but performance drop will not be 30%.

 

[delaro]

This just makes AMD more attractive doesn't it, the performance gap was close now it will be even closer.

 

[13thmonkey]

early reports on Linux show about a 5% hit for gaming, it's in the article on the front page.

 

[coozie7]

This doing the rounds at all the main tech sites, and info is a little confusing ATM, TPU has a news item that indicates AMD parts MIGHT be effected as the patches MAY be applied to all X86 CPUs, even though AMD chips are immune to the issue.

https://www.techpowerup.com/240187/amd-struggles-to-be-excluded-from-unwarranted-intel-vt-flaw-kernel-patches

 

[vapour]

early reports on Linux show about a 5% hit for gaming, it's in the article on the front page.

That is small impact, great. Any reliable source on Windows part?

 

[vapour]

This doing the rounds at all the main tech sites, and info is a little confusing ATM, TPU has a news item that indicates AMD parts MIGHT be effected as the patches MAY be applied to all X86 CPUs, even though AMD chips are immune to the issue.

https://www.techpowerup.com/240187/amd-struggles-to-be-excluded-from-unwarranted-intel-vt-flaw-kernel-patches

Wow, the fix is in...

 

[13thmonkey]

early reports on Linux show about a 5% hit for gaming, it's in the article on the front page.

That is small impact, great. Any reliable source on Windows part?

no because the tests were only done on Linux, windows is in the fast ring, but not finalised according to articles.

 

[13thmonkey]

This doing the rounds at all the main tech sites, and info is a little confusing ATM, TPU has a news item that indicates AMD parts MIGHT be effected as the patches MAY be applied to all X86 CPUs, even though AMD chips are immune to the issue.

https://www.techpowerup.com/240187/amd-struggles-to-be-excluded-from-unwarranted-intel-vt-flaw-kernel-patches

Wow, the fix is in...

bear in mind it's been known about for a while (couple of months at least) and they are announcing it now as fixes are nearly ready, and to improve take up on patch Tuesday.

 

[Paul NZ]

Havent noticed anything for the past 4 years..

 

[vapour]

Havent noticed anything for the past 4 years..

Theoretically, hackers can use the loophole to steal your info on pc. Nobody knows for sure no hackers did that to nobody.

 

[Paul NZ]

They can have a party there's nothing to steal

 

[krzyimprt]

I'm so confused, I thought I just patched my system to fix this security flaw today. Or is this a temporary fix? From what I'm reading online they have to rewrite the whole kernel. Anyone care to elaborate?

 

[vapour]

Intel saying "Recent reports that these exploits are caused by a “bug” or a “flaw” and are unique to Intel products are incorrect. Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices — with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems — are susceptible to these exploits."
Intel Official Twitter

 

[krzyimprt]

Intel saying "Recent reports that these exploits are caused by a “bug” or a “flaw” and are unique to Intel products are incorrect. Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices — with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems — are susceptible to these exploits."
Intel Official Twitter

I understand that, but why am I just hearing about it today?

This is what my asus board recent bios update states.

 

[Paul NZ]

I dont think thats the same flaw.

But if it is then not all Intel systems are affected. Mine doesnt even use ME and it doesnt have an BIOS update for that either

 

[vapour]

@ krzyimprt

I saw several claiming this is a bug hard to fix. They are only releasing a temporary work-around as fix. They need to rework the kernel in order to completely fix the issue. Let's wait for more info and official statements.

 

[13thmonkey]

Everything is saying that this will have to be an OS level software fix, i.e. MS, Apple and the Linux people will be issuing fixes, anything else is for a different problem.

The 'kernel' fixes will probably be in place for the next set of hardware, everything is suggesting at the moment that this is not retrospectively fixable except through the OS.

The ME issue is a different issue.

Issues like this are embargoed until fixes are close so that the new doesn't spread to those that they don't want to know about it, they are often found by researchers.

One report I read earlier today suggested that this was to do with speculative thread execution, and specifically how core series cpu's do this, and with the right encouragement a system could be made to access data in the kernel as a user, this is not thought to be a good thing, as data in the kernel is potentially unencrypted (at some point it has to be unencrypted to be used, this is where this happens) normally this cannot be accessed by 'user' level processes. Hence why this is less of a problem for AMD as they do things differently.

For now, all we can do is wait and see what happens.

 

[valeman2012]

We'll see but performance drop will not be 30%.

We will see fps drop like 1fps to 5fps after a OS patches CPU Security Bug in the system.

Lets say you play a game and got 60 fps you wont see that 60 fps stable anymore.

 

[vapour]

Many of you may have been already following this post: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3608739/intel-disputes-cpu-bug-claims.html#20557083

 

[delaro]

https://www.techspot.com/article/1554-meltdown-flaw-cpu-performance-windows/

It would seem the first patch really didn't effect gamers or your average user.

 

[krzyimprt]

https://www.techspot.com/article/1554-meltdown-flaw-cpu-performance-windows/

It would seem the first patch really didn't effect gamers or your average user.