Intel Plans To Have Spectre & Meltdown-Proof CPUs This Year

R

rgMekanic

[H]ard|News
Joined
May 13, 2013
Messages
6,943
Slashgear is reporting that intel plans to have versions of its processors that address the Spectre and Meltdown security flaws on the market later this year. News on the processor update came during the earnings call with Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, after the company announced better-than-expected results for Q4 2017.

While slashgear thinks this could be a win-win for Intel, forcing customers to upgrade faster than usual to avoid the crippling bugs, I think they underestimate how many people plan on jumping ship due to Intel's response to this.

Krzanich opened the Intel earnings call with security at the top of the agenda, saying that the company was working “around the clock” to address the issues. Software fixes, however, aren’t sufficient the chief executive admitted, saying that Intel was “acutely aware” that it needed to do more. However, he also had information on just what that would be.
 
Maybe they plan on giving everybody who has an Intel CPU a HUGE discount on a new one? :)
 
And I assume they will be giving everyone affected by this bug free replacement hardware? no just covering up the bug while knowingly selling vulnerable hardware. Sounds fair(y)
 
Just from my personal perspective, and I doubt I'm alone, I'm not going to buy a new Intel CPU that doesn't have this fixed in hardware and the performance is there. I've had this sig rig for 18 months now and I've been really happy with it, though I did have to replace the motherboard about a year ago but even Asus turned that around in about 10 days which is good from some of the stories I've read around here.
 
I've been putting off upgrading for a long time now. Have a 4770K. The recent problems have made me discount entirely that I would upgrade to one of the afflicted CPUs. This move keeps Intel an option when I eventually upgrade. An actual attack in the wild would do a lot more to push me to upgrade sooner, of course.
 
I'm honestly done with Intel in general. The constant socket changes were annoying. The miniscule performance upgrades were agitating. This was just the nail in the coffin.

I've gotten to play with a Ryzen for a bit, our Cooler Test Rig uses a 1700 OCd to 3.9. While I have not used it for much other than beating the holy hell out of it with Prime+Furmark (it's not even connected to my network to prevent it from getting updates which may screw up test results), I'm impressed as hell with it.

I'll keep saving my pennies for a used TR rig and be done with blue for the foreseeable future.
 
mbelue said:
I thought it took many many months and sometimes years to design CPU architectures.
If they're going to have CPUs that close this security hole this year, how long have they known about this vulnerability?
Click to expand...

Google’s engineering teams began working to protect our customers from these vulnerabilities upon our learning of them in June 2017. We applied solutions across the entire suite of Google products, and we collaborated with the industry at large to help protect users across the web.

https://www.blog.google/topics/google-cloud/answering-your-questions-about-meltdown-and-spectre/
 
Future prediction.... Intel comes up with new socket XYZ for these CPUs, new motherboards and CPUs for all!

Haha.. oh wait it's not April 1st yet.


WAAAAYYYYY back in the day (94? 95?), when the Intel math bug became public knowledge, Intel provided CPU replacements free of charge. You think they will do that now? HAHAHAHAHAH

When AMD screwed up their server Opteron chips back in the low 2000's, they replaced them all (this might not be public knowledge, but I never signed a NDA) for free. I recall many a night server maintenance where we had to replace CPUs for *reasons* from live systems and send them back.
 
Last edited:
rgMekanic said:
I'm honestly done with Intel in general. The constant socket changes were annoying. The miniscule performance upgrades were agitating. This was just the nail in the coffin.

I've gotten to play with a Ryzen for a bit, our Cooler Test Rig uses a 1700 OCd to 3.9. While I have not used it for much other than beating the holy hell out of it with Prime+Furmark (it's not even connected to my network to prevent it from getting updates which may screw up test results), I'm impressed as hell with it.

I'll keep saving my pennies for a used TR rig and be done with blue for the foreseeable future.
Click to expand...
you got a permit for all those threads?
 
rgMekanic said:
Slashgear is reporting that intel plans to have versions of its processors that address the Spectre and Meltdown security flaws on the market later this year. News on the processor update came during the earnings call with Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, after the company announced better-than-expected results for Q4 2017.

While slashgear thinks this could be a win-win for Intel, forcing customers to upgrade faster than usual to avoid the crippling bugs, I think they underestimate how many people plan on jumping ship due to Intel's response to this.

Krzanich opened the Intel earnings call with security at the top of the agenda, saying that the company was working “around the clock” to address the issues. Software fixes, however, aren’t sufficient the chief executive admitted, saying that Intel was “acutely aware” that it needed to do more. However, he also had information on just what that would be.
Click to expand...


who exactly, that Intel really cares about, is going to jump ship? No one that will affect their bottom line.
 
Burticus said:
Future prediction.... Intel comes up with new socket XYZ for these CPUs, new motherboards for all!
Click to expand...

But of course there'll be new motherboards! That way you'll be sure your new rig is bug free.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dgz
like this
mbelue said:
I thought it took many many months and sometimes years to design CPU architectures.
If they're going to have CPUs that close this security hole this year, how long have they known about this vulnerability?
Click to expand...

Does Intel use microcode the way Motorola cpus do?

This could just be some minor changes that are just more efficient in silicone.
 
capt_cope said:
Shintai said:
There isn´t going to be any new CPU with some sudden fixes to this for years to come.
Click to expand...
I'll be shocked if the next generation of CPUs from Intel don't have this sorted. Who knows how long they've know about it. At the very least we know they've known that OTHER people have known about this flaw for at least the past 5-6 months... looking back, I'm guessing THIS and not threadripper was the culprit behind the recent trashfire releases. I thought it'd be hard to out-do the kabylake-x release, but if intel drops z390 with cpus still impacted by this flaw... damn.

Unless you have some affiliation with intel that grants you access to info the rest of us don't have that is... (And it would certainly explain some of your opinions.)
Click to expand...

Told you so Shintai.
 
Isn't AMD (and plenty of other CPUs) affected by at least one of these bugs? For me, this will delay a possible new laptop until they've fixed the bug, but I'm not going to avoid Intel because of this. Lower performance increases sucks, but it's not like AMD is pushing them...and frankly most s/w is not CPU bound.
 
Hey, we fixed your $3000 CPU! Yeah, you can just buy a brand new one without the problem!
 
Intel has already shown through their patch progress that they intend to release future cpus with the same microcode updates. Future cpu's will have hardware changes to minimize the performance impact of those updates. However, they will likely still be as vulnerable as exsisting cpus to misconfiguration/malware disabling the spectre patches.
 
Well, who didn't see this coming.
Years of stagnation leaving customers no reason to upgrade and BAM! Manufactured reason to upgrade. This stinks to high heaven.

I would like to believe that people will jump ship and that AMD would be a viable alternative but...
 
For people who need to be upgrade now that is quite a bit of a loss for Intel. Their next quarter minus one time asset sales will tell the real story.
 
mbelue said:
I thought it took many many months and sometimes years to design CPU architectures.
If they're going to have CPUs that close this security hole this year, how long have they known about this vulnerability?
Click to expand...

Well they knew of the bug in July last year. I imagine it was a month or two to discover the exact cause if a physics problem like row hammer. Two days if it was a pure software attack.

People rarely hand design circuits any more. The use something similar to c code which designs the circuits then if necessary they hand tune placement.

To the patch the existing code, they add a couple circuits on the jump address to see if the speculative execution is in bounds for the kernel ecs. (Extended code segment)
 
Yeah Q4 sales werent really affected by Spectre and meltdown. Q1 is gonna hurt them, I dont think 2018 is going to be as kind to Intel as 2017 was, slip slidin' away...
 
Hoping I can keep this i7-2700K running long enough for those chips. Taxes are going to other things
 
I would think the reasonable thing to do is offer replacements for CPUs that were in-warranty when they were notified of the issue, regardless of current warranty status. For *DAMN* sure, they should refund/replace everyone who bought an 7000/8000-series CPU that they KNEW was borked and would have significant performance issues when they sold it. It's outright fraud to put out a new product and advertise it with benchmarks that you know damn well are completely invalid due to your own legacy issues.
 
Paladin21 said:
I would think the reasonable thing to do is offer replacements for CPUs that were in-warranty when they were notified of the issue, regardless of current warranty status. For *DAMN* sure, they should refund/replace everyone who bought an 7000/8000-series CPU that they KNEW was borked and would have significant performance issues when they sold it. It's outright fraud to put out a new product and advertise it with benchmarks that you know damn well are completely invalid due to your own legacy issues.
Click to expand...

Haven't you heard? Accountability is only for the little people.
 
I'd been a huge AMD fan (not quite fan boy) back in the athlon64 days ... I switched to the darkside come C2D ... right now I'm rocking a 4.5~ yr old i7-4770K build ..

I'm pretty certain my upgrade later this year will be ryzen 2 ... screw intel...
 
I would like an AMD system, but I am really looking for an AM4 mATX mobo that does mGPU in 4 slots.
There are a couple of AM4 mATX mobos that do mGPU with 5 slots, but that's not good enough.

Between that and RAM prices, it's kind of difficult to pull the trigger.
As for Graphics, I will just reuse my GTX 970 and GTX 960
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top