Intel Has a Big Problem. It Needs to Act Like It

Megalith

Megalith

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The chastising of Intel continued this week with another round of articles criticizing the company’s allegedly trivial attitude in light of Meltdown and Spectre. Bloomberg advises that Intel should probably adopt some “real humility, not cheap theatrics,” as the company is expected to face the wrath of regulators who seem dead set on consumer protection suits and antitrust investigations.

Future designs will include hard-wired fixes that speed things up, but the first versions of those won’t appear until later this year, the company says. All of this puts Intel in a tough spot. The company is a nonfactor in the smartphone-chips business, and rival NVIDIA has taken a commanding lead in the fast-growing market for graphics chips used in artificial intelligence applications. Now, Meltdown and Spectre threaten the core of Intel’s business.
 
I have never seen Intel show humility. But I tend to agree that they should. This seems to be as significant a problem as any chip maker has ever had, especially for servers and workstations, their highest-volume customers. I'd like to at least see a promise that the next generation of chips will receive a significant redesign to negate these attacks. They've sort of danced around saying it, but... not good enough for me.
 
I'm hoping the next round of chips are significantly cheaper. They have been commanding a high price on the server side of things for awhile while not delivering more performance than previous generations.
 
Redmud said:
If MSI does not issue a BIOS update for my x97, then what?
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hope that microsoft changes it's mind and decides to push the microcode patch via windows??

upgrade?

some people are already hacking bios for older motherboards to add the new microcodes.. however w/ the current microcode it seems many have "issues" when doing this..

my plan is to upgrade from my i7-4770K later this year (however ram / video cards prices are giving me 2nd / 3rd thoughts on this) ... when revised microcode update comes out (supposedly end of month from what I read) .. if microsoft or gigabyte haven't moved on providing protection for my Z87 based board... I guess I'm going to read up on modding the bios and add the microcode myself I guess (hopefully).
 
Azphira said:
Replacing affected processors sold after they knew about the issues would be fair.
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And also impossible due to requiring a complete platform upgrade.

A significantly discounted upgrade would be fair and practical.
 
Azphira said:
Replacing affected processors sold after they knew about the issues would be fair.
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Exactly. Recalls are common in other industries. They may find the tides quickly turning in AMD's favor due to mistrust and fear of the inaction same in the future if they don't man up and do the right thing. Call me crazy, but I would think that this would fall under "manufacturing defect"; as in "warranted against manufacturing defects".
 
mynamehere said:
Exactly. Recalls are common in other industries. They may find the tides quickly turning in AMD's favor due to mistrust and fear of the inaction same in the future if they don't man up and do the right thing. Call me crazy, but I would think that this would fall under "manufacturing defect"; as in "warranted against manufacturing defects".
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Tsumi said:
And also impossible due to requiring a complete platform upgrade.

A significantly discounted upgrade would be fair and practical.
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Either is fine with me as long as Intel really offers one. Since these bugs were first reported to Intel on June 1st, 2017, assuming Intel really didn't have any clues on the bugs before June 1st, 2017, Intel must offer compensations to those purchased Intel CPU after that date.
 
S$@t happens, I’m cool with the bug. But Jesus - at least update my ivy bridge with a security fix since you know - overclocked sandy’s And up are just as good as anything released in the past 7 years...

Everyone should buy a round of amd just to punish intel with their wallets...
 
Crazy to think that Intel would throw billions of dollars away in business by not taking the future of the company extremely serious.

They have to get the pricing and performance fixed asap. It has to make sense. A lot of it doesn't, some of it does.
 
Everyone is taking out their anger at AMD for their ineptness of CPU performance for over a decade at Intel.
 
ChefJeff789 said:
I have never seen Intel show humility. But I tend to agree that they should. This seems to be as significant a problem as any chip maker has ever had, especially for servers and workstations, their highest-volume customers. I'd like to at least see a promise that the next generation of chips will receive a significant redesign to negate these attacks. They've sort of danced around saying it, but... not good enough for me.
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You dont rapidly redesign a uarch, the core i architecture is now routed in until 2020 and so will the OOO address subsystem form part of that. I don't expect anything fundamentally different from intel until after 2020 when the core i architecture is finally retired.
 
Azphira said:
Replacing affected processors sold after they knew about the issues would be fair.
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I completely understand them selling their current processors when they were made aware of the bug. But then to release 6 core pieces, knowing full well that there was a "defect" or at the very least a bug for security is really unacceptable.

At the very least, delay their new product to make sure that microcode/patches were available at launch.

I am pretty annoyed as I was almost going to go back to AMD, but decided to go with Intel with the new product release. Then find out weeks later that all their shit is busted... great, thanks!
 
mynamehere said:
Exactly. Recalls are common in other industries. They may find the tides quickly turning in AMD's favor due to mistrust and fear of the inaction same in the future if they don't man up and do the right thing. Call me crazy, but I would think that this would fall under "manufacturing defect"; as in "warranted against manufacturing defects".
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Why turn to AMD? AMD was impacted some by this, not as bad as Intell. I don't see a replacement program being realistic. How many computers out there have these chips? Even if they said here is a 10% or 50% off for a cpu purchase, how many people could utalize that? Maybe 99%+ of the people on this board of course, but of large businesses and general public? They buy full systems, not cpus. Most buy bottom or close to bottom end. So then it's 20 to maybe 100 bucks off a system? That's nice if you are buying a new computer, but not enough of a reason to go buy a new system.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no Intell fanboy. I prefer AMD.
 
I don't know when I'll actually need to do a new build but at this point I'm pretty sure it will be AMD. From mild performance increases over the last 7 years coupled with substantial price increases, a new pay to play(raid keys), and their approach to this fiasco, I'm pretty well fed up with Intel. Not to mention that Ryzen had a lot of good reviews and I've been pretty impressed with 'em. I just hope MS wises up and starts seeing how Intel is becoming a burden to them. Sure AMD ain't perfect either but it definitely looks better than the steaming pile Intel is starting to resemble.
 
Honestly I'd love to say Intel should replace any CPU requested via RMA process with the same chip that's a v2 without being vulnerable to Spectre or Meltdown as long as it's still within the standard manufacturer warranty period. -- Also make it a no questions asked swap, as long as the chip's serial number matches and it returns to them as a complete chip & not a melted piece of slag from a failed overclocking :)
 
Honestly I'd love to say Intel should replace any CPU requested via RMA process with the same chip that's a v2 without being vulnerable to Spectre or Meltdown as long as it's still within the standard manufacturer warranty period.
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Spectre likely will not be totally solved for several years. Meltdown could be solved sometime in the next 18 or so months.
 
Ultima99 said:
If you mean X99 you should get it. If you meant Z97 then probably not.
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that's bullshit. (not what you said, rather what is happening)

i paid ~450 dollars for the ultimate z97 board (z97-ws) and now it's brown bread?

it's not even a consumer level board.

ASUS calls it a server lol.
 
I don't see intel offering new cpus. As stated above, the micro-architecture needs to be changed (as I understand it). Then, let's say intel DOES offer a new cpu. Think it'll have the same pin layout as the one you have? Think intel will send you a mobo? Do you think the RAM will be compatible (for those with DDR3 mobos)? Think intel will pony up new ram?

The best I see is some sort of class action where current cpu owners (purchased after intel new about the flaw...if, indeed, it can be legally classified as a flaw), getting a few buck each.
 
Their first new 8-Core chip is supposed to be comparable to the 1st gen Ryzen
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From Cyrix I would expect it to be a 2.X GHz CPU with 1/2 the IPC of Intel and lower power usage.
 
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I have a feeling this is going to play out more in the server arena than the consumer PC space...at least initially. It looks like the most serious hit to performance is on server applications, and the performance, post-patch, changes the cost/performance ratio. This will have an IMMEDIATE impact on data centers, which, again, will have an IMMEDIATE effect on their bottom lines.

I suspect that many will be looking long and hard at AMD's EPYC platform, and making future purchasing decisions now that will affect both Intel and AMD for years to come.

On the consumer side, it has cemented my desire to own an AMD processor in my next system, most likely a "Zen+" processor later this year (to go with my new "Volta" based Nvidia card and Vive Pro). Not that gaming performance is affected by the bug and patch that much, but I loathe the way Intel handled the disclosure of the issue, and their attitude in handling complaints. "Hubris" sums it up nicely.
 
Master_shake_ said:
that's bullshit. (not what you said, rather what is happening)

i paid ~450 dollars for the ultimate z97 board (z97-ws) and now it's brown bread?

it's not even a consumer level board.

ASUS calls it a server lol.
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Just down go onto too many porn sites or install shady software and there's not much to fear regarding these exploits as there with any other malware. Run in a limited account or go onto shady sites from a VM. Not sure why everyone feels their system is just going to Meltdown all of a sudden. ;)
 
zkostik said:
Just down go onto too many porn sites or install shady software and there's not much to fear regarding these exploits as there with any other malware. Run in a limited account or go onto shady sites from a VM. Not sure why everyone feels their system is just going to Meltdown all of a sudden. ;)
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because regular people are gonna hear about this and resale value tanks.
 
Azphira said:
Replacing affected processors sold after they knew about the issues would be fair.
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And I'd actually like to see an external probe into when they knew, and their internal testing for the impact of a fix. I hate to get all tin hat on this, but I suspect they new, and didn't fix it to try to keep AMD at bay through cutting corners.
 
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