Nvidia Patches Drivers Against Meltdown And Spectre

News
By Lucian Armasu
published

LAS VEGAS, NV -- Nvidia announced that it updated its GPU drivers against the recently discovered Spectre and Meltdown CPU flaws.

Nvidia GPUs Are Immune

Nvidia said that its software, like any other software that runs on the flawed CPUs, can also be vulnerable to the two CPU bugs. The update will make it difficult for attackers to exploit Nvidia's driver software when running on machines with the vulnerable CPUs.

Nvidia made it clear that the GPUs themselves are not susceptible to the Meltdown or Spectre attacks. Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, said the following:

Our GPUs are immune, they are not affected by these security issues. What we did was released driver updates to patch CPU security vulnerabilities. We are patching the CPU vulnerabilities in the same way Amazon will, Epic, and Microsoft, because we have software, too.Anyone who writes software has to patch. So we have to patch our drivers to patch the CPU vulnerabilities. I am absolutely certain our GPU is not affected.

Drivers Get Updated

There are three variants of the bugs in total, two for Spectre and one for Meltdown. A patch for the first variant of Spectre (CVE-2017-5753) is included in today’s update. Nvidia said that its initial analysis concluded that updating the second Spectre variant (CVE-2017-5715) will require more investigation. The company noted that it doesn’t believe its software is vulnerable to Meltdown at this time.

Updated Products

Nvidia released updates to GeForce, Quadro, NVS drivers, Tesla drivers, and Grid drivers. Consumers can download the updates from Nvidia’s driver download page. Enterprise customers of Nvidia’s Grid service should visit the Nvidia Licensing Center. DGX-1 or DGX Station should visit the Nvidia Enterprise portal.

Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers software news and the issues surrounding privacy and security.
10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • redgarl
    By doing so, is it going to affect GPU performances?
    Reply
  • Eximo
    Likely not, they are saying they are patching their code that runs on the CPU. Nvidia control panel, geforce experience, etc. Likely to avoid themselves being used as infiltration points.
    Reply
  • TadashiTG
    So how many years back are we going in CPU speed with these patches in general?
    Reply
  • amstech
    Nvidia, your better than this!
    Reply
  • sykozis
    20581504 said:
    Nvidia, your better than this!

    Better than what? Your post makes no sense. They released a driver update to fix a security flaw. Were they just supposed to ignore it? Every software and driver developer is going to have to incorporate similar patches into their code. Instead of posting such a senseless response, maybe you should take the time to learn about the "bugs" they're patching for.
    Reply
  • Jesse_20
    Considering the bug patches reduce performance by 6% to 30%, and that each generation of CPU adds roughly 10% performance to it's predecessor, you could be set back by as many as 3 generations of CPU's, depending on workload and how old the CPU is. My understanding is that older CPU's are hit harder than more modern ones.
    Reply
  • boju
    Wonder if the cpu side and windows needs to be patched first before installing nvidias update? Will there be complications for those that are waiting/refuse to update windows? Probly not but have to ask.
    Reply
  • derekullo
    20581541 said:
    20581504 said:
    Nvidia, your better than this!

    Better than what? Your post makes no sense. They released a driver update to fix a security flaw. Were they just supposed to ignore it? Every software and driver developer is going to have to incorporate similar patches into their code. Instead of posting such a senseless response, maybe you should take the time to learn about the "bugs" they're patching for.

    Obvious troll is obvious.
    Reply
  • Sam Hain
    20581399 said:
    So how many years back are we going in CPU speed with these patches in general?

    https://www.techarp.com/guides/complete-meltdown-spectre-cpu-list/

    After reading down the page above listing AMD, you'll see "NEXT PAGE >" for the next listing of additional AMD CPUs and the page after will be Apple, ARM & Intel CPUs and so on. These two issues affect a lot of CPUs, some in more and different ways than others, including the patches once applied...
    Reply
  • 48251tabletoproad
    BOJU wondered if the cpu side and windows needs to be patched first before installing nvidias update.

    Not sure who else has the problem of no sound available on an HDMI connection after update, but I did update Windows, flash the BIOS, etc. and did a clean install. Still no sound on a GTX 960. Worked fine prior to update.
    Reply