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Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues

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Re: Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues

#111

Post by Twirrim »

sebazzz wrote: post #67
Twirrim wrote: post #18

Well this promises to be fun, especially for cloud providers (and those running instances on the cloud, who now potentially get to suffer through host instability)

It is not clear if Xeon server processors are affected.

Intel has made such a complicated product line it's really difficult to figure out what is and isn't affected. As per the Lenovo update mentioned elsewhere in this thread:

"*3 – (Broadwell E, H, U/Y; Haswell standard, Core Extreme, ULT) Symptom: Intel has received reports of unexpected page faults, which they are currently investigating. Out of an abundance of caution, Intel requested Lenovo to stop distributing this firmware."

So far as I can figure, Xeons are covered by "Haswell standard". Core Extreme was those ridiculously overpriced i7s. ULT is the "Ultra Low TDP" chips.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haswell_%28microarchitecture%2...

It looks like from the desktop and mobile processor fields, if there is anything special about the core they put a suffix on denoting it, so Xeon may well classify as "Haswell standard"?

Re: Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues

#112

Post by djrogers »

EgoIncarnate wrote: post #70
sverige wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel's greatest PR success in this mess has been to conflate Meltdown with Spectre. Only Intel is affected by Meltdown because of their design, and it is a more easily exploited bug.

Meltdown is not only Intel. Some ARM and Apple designed ARM processors are affected by Meltdown as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerabili...

What’s your source for the Apple claim, as your link doesn’t support it.

Re: Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues

#113

Post by paulmd »

sverige wrote: post #66
EgoIncarnate wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing items afterwords probably wouldn't work as you might be able stuff (instead of flush) the cache and figure out which line was emptied. Intel isn't being sneaky, speculative reading was a standard and accepted feature for out of order processors for over 20 years (remember it affects ARM,AMD,Apple,IBM etc as well). Speculative reading privileged memory while unprivileged was a big mistake though.

Intel's greatest PR success in this mess has been to conflate Meltdown with Spectre. Only Intel is affected by Meltdown because of their design, and it is a more easily exploited bug.

Meltdown is a specific type of Spectre exploit.

While it's more easily exploited, it's also patchable with minimal performance impact, unlike Spectre in general.

Re: Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues

#114

Post by xenadu02 »

readams wrote: post #103
paulie_a wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an avid fan of AMD going back to the late 80s they have always been a cheaper and better alternative. I am still bitter about rdram in regards to Intel

They really haven't. AMD was so far behind Intel they were in danger of going extinct in data centers. Only very recently have they caught up again to be a credible competitor. This bug and Intel's response is very good timing for AMD though.

It was Intel’s anti-competitive and illegal actions that prevented AMD from owning the market during the several year period when Opteron was not only the best CPU but the only 64-bit x86 CPU.

Unfortunately the legal process was far too slow and the penalties were a pittance compared to the profits.

It benefits all of us to have a competitive market for x86 CPUs.

Re: Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues

#115

Post by EgoIncarnate »

djrogers wrote: post #112
EgoIncarnate wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meltdown is not only Intel. Some ARM and Apple designed ARM processors are affected by Meltdown as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerabili...

What’s your source for the Apple claim, as your link doesn’t support it.

"Apple has already released mitigations in iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2, and tvOS 11.2 to help defend against Meltdown. To help defend against Spectre, Apple has released mitigations in iOS 11.2.2, the macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 Supplemental Update, and Safari 11.0.2 for macOS Sierra and OS X El Capitan. Apple Watch is not affected by either Meltdown or Spectre." https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208394

Re: Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues

#116

Post by sangnoir »

djsumdog wrote: post #49
SteveNuts wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customers actually could turn to AMD... their offerings are very competitive right now.

I'm thinking of building an AMD dev box. For enterprise consumers, if they're using 1U or blade servers, they could make the choice to switch to AMD for future nodes.

I strongly recommend that you go AMD. I went all-in on AMD - I agonized over the choice between 8-core Ryzen and 8-core ThreadRipper: ended up with a 12-core TR thanks to steep holiday-season discounts that lowered prices one rung down. TR4-socket motherboards a way more expensive compared to Ryzen ones (same-old AM4 socket).

I know my box is overkill for my needs now, but upgradeability is a big plus for me; I'm only using 16GB of RAM, but could up that to 128GB, and maybe I might swap out the CPU for a 64-core Zen4+ in 2022. For reference, my last dev box is from 2010[1](!) which I upgraded over time and this strategy has served me well. YMMV.

1. Westmere - 1st Gen 'Intel Core'

Re: Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues

#117

Post by EgoIncarnate »

eximius wrote: post #99
EgoIncarnate wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing items afterwords probably wouldn't work as you might be able stuff (instead of flush) the cache and figure out which line was emptied. Intel isn't being sneaky, speculative reading was a standard and accepted feature for out of order processors for over 20 years (remember it affects ARM,AMD,Apple,IBM etc as well). Speculative reading privileged memory while unprivileged was a big mistake though.

I don't mean they're literally being sneaky. The point was, from an OS or userland perspective, it should be invisible. Besides performance, it should have no effect because it is literally breaking the CPU model by executing code it shouldn't. It fixes it by not retiring the results, but the bug is in leaving an effect that can be found.

If you had said CPU designers were being sneaky it would be more obvious that you weren't being literal. By saying "Intel silently, sneakily...", it's more personal and seems as if you are being literal. It wasn't really silent either, it was well enough documented that they did speculative execution. Many many very technical and educated people from across the industry knew about this and didn't think it was an issue. They were wrong.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. I don't think the problem is that speculative execution is not as invisible as it was once believed. The problem is more of awareness and documentation. If there was an option to disable speculative execution and awareness of the associated security issues from the beginning, I don't think anyone would have a problem with using it for a performance boost where it was safe to do so. The problem is there was an industry wide assumption that it wasn't a problem that turned out to be wrong.

Re: Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues

#118

Post by badminton1 »

badminton1 wrote: post #14

I think it's hard to see how this will affect Intel in the long term. When Samsung phones were blowing up, I thought that was it, but somehow people kept preferring the phones.

Now, in retrospective, the Samsung battery issue affected only a small portion of users, whereas this will affect every single user in the form of decreased performance.

Re: Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues

#119

Post by EgoIncarnate »

paulmd wrote: post #113
sverige wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel's greatest PR success in this mess has been to conflate Meltdown with Spectre. Only Intel is affected by Meltdown because of their design, and it is a more easily exploited bug.

Meltdown is a specific type of Spectre exploit. While it's more easily exploited, it's also patchable with minimal performance impact, unlike Spectre in general.

Potentially minimal is probably more accurate. It's workload dependent. In some cases, such as frequent interrupts or system calls on older CPUs without the PCID and INVPCIB features to mitigate the cost, it can be be very expensive.

Re: Intel Security Issue Update: Addressing Reboot Issues

#120

Post by pritambaral »

paulmd wrote: post #113
sverige wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel's greatest PR success in this mess has been to conflate Meltdown with Spectre. Only Intel is affected by Meltdown because of their design, and it is a more easily exploited bug.

Meltdown is a specific type of Spectre exploit. While it's more easily exploited, it's also patchable with minimal performance impact, unlike Spectre in general.

No, it's not. Please read the website of the attacks created by those who discovered and named them: https://meltdownattack.com and https://spectreattack.com
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