Intel's new microcode license prohibits benchmarking.

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ecuador

Limp Gawd
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Dec 29, 2008
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Taking a page from Nvidia's book I guess, Intel seems to have updated the license they ship with microcode patches for their CPUs, strangely not allowing users to "publish or provide any software benchmark or comparison test results." .
At least one distribution (Debian - well known for never "tainting" their open source distros) is not taking it apparently and are not releasing the updates. Link to the Register
 
Wow, I thought for sure this was just clickbait BS but after reading the article, and understanding what I could, it seems that, for the time being, this is the situation.

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T
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LICENSE RESTRICTIONS. Unless expressly permitted under the
Agreement, You will not, and will not allow any third party to (i) use, copy,
distribute, sell or offer to sell the Software or associated documentation;
(ii) modify, adapt, enhance, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, change
or create derivative works from the Software except and only to the extent as
specifically required by mandatory applicable laws or any applicable third
party license terms accompanying the Software; (iii) use or make the Software
available for the use or benefit of third parties; or (iv) use the Software on
Your products other than those that include the Intel hardware product(s),
platform(s), or software identified in the Software; or (v) publish or provide
any Software benchmark or comparison test results.

https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/z2F3Cj6R8Q/
 
wait, is this for any and all end users or is this a specific distribution?
 
KazeoHin said:
wait, is this for any and all end users or is this a specific distribution?
Click to expand...

It is for all end users. Apparently some distros will have you specifically agree to it.

I did expect this to make front page news. I mean it is pretty crazy !
 
Are these patches optional? Or is everyone on Windows 10 going to be prompted to agree to Intel's EULA?
 
They can add it to their EULA if they want to, but they can't enforce it. Look into the Consumer Review Fairness Act that was passed 12/16. It was supposed to stop companies from suing for posting poor reviews to online sites, but the terms are actually pretty broad. Among other provisions, the law says " This bill makes a provision of a form contract void from the inception if it: (1) prohibits or restricts an individual who is a party to such a contract from engaging in written, oral, or pictorial reviews, or other similar performance assessments or analyses of, including by electronic means, the goods, services, or conduct of a person that is also a party to the contract" The only out they'd have is to claim that this data is a trade secret, but something that can be tested by anyone in the world with a patched system and some open source software is obviously not a trade secret.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, etc. However, I presented this justification to my Doctoral advisor and ran it past the University legal team before getting approval to work on some research that's against the Cisco TOS (ie, same stuff about no performance numbers without permission) and was cleared to proceed. YMMV
 
Yup, this has been flying around the tech sites like wildfire. Guess Intel got tired of people talking about the performance impacts. :arghh:
 
LOL

Fuck them and the PR segmentation train they rode in on. They and all the introll fanboys can go choke on all the lazy tricks done for years to grab every bit of performance, security of memory access be damned. Big memory is way fucking slower than cpu, can only hide that for so long.

Part of me is laughing that some of the DRM (SGX etc) not-really-your-hardware shit they have been baking in for years is being broken by this. None of your actual end customers with a clue want this shit, only the scum that want to control code run on other people's machines are pushing for it.

Ryzen is fucking great and only getting better. Way better bang/$ and none of this feature nickel n dime bullshit.
 
This is just a PR scare tactic. They're just grasping for straws here. Anything that could possibly save them anymore drama or blemish on their reputation. Intel knows they've dug themselves a deep grave in the last 12 months.
 
Wow....they must be seriously worried people will find out that the patches drop performance big time or something. I mean why do that if there isn't hardly any performance loss.....Wow I cant wait to see benchmarks now!
 
I don't think I will be buying Intel CPUs any more. I do not want to support them. It appears that they want to pull the wool over our eyes. It does not bode well for the upcoming performance impacts we are going to have to be dealing with due to these vulnerabilities. This could be the worst thing I have seen them do ever.
 
i can't wait for the PR nightmare when intel tries to enfoce this.

nero is fiddling intel.
 
Laws and EULAs are one thing, but what exactly will they do when you've violated the software license? Okay, so you can't run the chip anymore? And how exactly will they enforce that? And even if they do, will it really be cost effective to take one person's cpu from them?

The enforcement of such an agreement was never thought out by the legal department, hence they knew it really couldn't be enforced. Still people agreed to it so Intel can at least say--that benchmark is illegal and stop providing chips to the media outlets (who could probably ask for an end user to 'donate' a chip or just go buy one).
 
SickBeast said:
I don't think I will be buying Intel CPUs any more. I do not want to support them. It appears that they want to pull the wool over our eyes. It does not bode well for the upcoming performance impacts we are going to have to be dealing with due to these vulnerabilities. This could be the worst thing I have seen them do ever.
Click to expand...

I'm switching to 2950 or 90wx soon. Just need some more will power.
 
tangoseal said:
I'm switching to 2950 or 90wx soon. Just need some more will power.
Click to expand...
AMD has really done well since they bought out ATI and introduced Ryzen. If I could have seen this coming years back when their stock tanked it would have been very lucrative to grab 1000 shares (almost a 20x return today).
 
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