Intel Releasing New Server Chips This Year That Block Spectre Attacks in Hardware

DooKey

DooKey

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Brian Krzanich (Intel CEO), stated that Intel will be releasing new server chips (Cascade Lake) this year that block Spectre attacks in hardware. They are including partitioning technology in the new chips that prevents snooping between applications. Hopefully this new technique they are using is effective and doesn't impact performance significantly. Additionally, they are going to bring this tech to a new version of the current Kaby Lake Xeon. Good luck Intel, you're going to need it.

While Variant 1 will continue to be addressed via software mitigations, we are making changes to our hardware design to further address the other two. We have redesigned parts of the processor to introduce new levels of protection through partitioning that will protect against both Variants 2 and 3. Think of this partitioning as additional “protective walls” between applications and user privilege levels to create an obstacle for bad actors.
 
Sounds like they have been working on this for awhile. Pretty sure silicon development takes more then 6 months to go from concept to product?
 
Dekar12 said:
Sounds like they have been working on this for awhile. Pretty sure silicon development takes more then 6 months to go from concept to product?
Click to expand...

My thought as well, this is the kind of thing Intel and AMD knew about but figured no one would ever find out....and now that they have they already had their way to resolve it and now they have to do it...
 
In that case it almost sounds like a recall in the car world. A few years back when the big GM ignition switch recall was surfacing, I thought I saw a report that said they may have already known. The top suits meet with lawers and such and crunch the numbers to see if the cost of a recall outweighs the potential cost of lawsuit(s), amongst other variables.
 
Dekar12 said:
Sounds like they have been working on this for awhile. Pretty sure silicon development takes more then 6 months to go from concept to product?
Click to expand...
Google’s Project Zero team originally reported the Spectre and Meltdown issues to Intel on June 2017, for a 2h'18 release that's 12+ months time.
 
Isn't Meltdown the nastier of the two? So when is the hardware fix for Meltdown?
 
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