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Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

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Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#151

Post by harry8 »

theprotocol wrote: post #140
chrisper wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just mark every 2nd Tuesday of a month as patch day and you won't have surprises!

• Updates are not served to me at regular, known intervals. Perhaps it's due to a progressive rollout policy of some kind. • Certain days come up that I, the paying user, do not want to patch on. Microsoft wins this disagreement and I lose. This occurs in a glib fashion with a message like "Hey, just a heads up, we are going to restart your computer" (whether I like it or not). It is my computer, there is no "we!" It…

You are best placed to make that assessment on your own needs. Know that many of us have done it and it turned out to be easier than we thought it would be. Good luck with the analysis!

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#152

Post by andy_ppp »

How is this enforceable in Law - I mean surely free speech laws apply here? You can't be compelled by contracts like this to not talk, it's absurd.

It doesn't even seem like a particularly well written clause as it could be interpreted to mean benchmarking the microcode update process not the hardware.

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#153

Post by bionsystem »

aisofteng wrote: post #79
ddtaylor wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well the license specifically says you will not permit a third party to either. That might as well read as "you can't provide cloud computing" since you can't know what someone is going to execute on their server before they execute it!

And nobody releases production code to a cloud environment without performance testing of significant changes.

You could say they don't have to publish the results... Although it only differs the problem. If I build my SAAS on top of a cloud service that runs on Intel, and my customer complains about perf results of my software before and after, and makes the result available somehow (knowing that it's on updated microcode or not), who is responsible ? The cloud provider, myself, or my customer ?

Etc etc. This is a legal mess and a strong attack on freedom.

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#154

Post by justinclift »

mmrezaie wrote: post #143
snaky wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clearly, they don't have an answer to AMD at all They still have a huge opportunity for CPU+FPGA, they bought Altera for the purpose.

at SC and CUG this year the main focus was that in less than 10 years IPC improvement is going to go away (I am not sure where IPC improvement was in the last three years). Anyway, the next step is to make CPUs as much heterogeneous as possible like a SOC. Both Intel and AMD are going there but we need to sit and see which direction is going get the momentom like what nVidia has done.

The new ARM AI processor looks like it'll play well in this space for some workloads:

https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/08/22/arm-stands-on-should...

Not a thing for everyday desktops, but looks like compute competition is er... heating up. :)

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#155

Post by justinclift »

wolfgke wrote: post #147

My thougt based on the HN headline "Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed" (after having read the article, of course): Doesn't this show that it is time for someone to set up some kind of "ScienceLeaks" website, where scientists can upload research (results, papers, ...) anonymously which they are are not allowed to do legally because of various such "research-restricting" laws. ---…

Sleazy marketers would be all over that. :/

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#156

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #37
eksemplar wrote: post #11

Aside from my vic20 and c64 I’ve only ever owned intel CPUs, and those two may have been intel as well, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never made a decision to chose Intel based on benchmark, I’ve bought them because they’ve always been great for me. So it’ll be ironic when I buy an AMD processor when I upgrade for cyberpunk 2077, because of benchmarks. Not because AMD is faster, they may be but I wouldn’t know, no, it’ll be…

> Aside from my vic20 and c64 I’ve only ever owned intel CPUs, and those two may have been intel as well, I wouldn’t know. At that time, few home computers were based on Intel processors because they were too expensive. Commodore's early computers, like Atari's, were based on the MOS Technology 6502 (made by ex-Motorola engineers as a cheaper and easier-to-integrate alternative to the Motorola 6800; the corresponding…

Zilog was of course famously founded by ex-Intel people to provide a cheaper alternative to the 8080.

The UK's Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC were famously Z80-based, as well as the MSX spec (as you've mentioned) which was huge in Japan. It was also used in a lot of arcade machines either as a main CPU or as a sound chip.

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#157

Post by bionsystem »

paulie_a wrote: post #10
Someone1234 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you buy a CPU that was previously patched, even by Intel themselves.

Or you outright ignore the stipulation and do whatever the hell you want. Quite frankly I hope to see some benchmark articles that literally start with profanity telling Intel where to stick it.

This, definitely. This whole thing is bullshit. What are they going to do, sue the hell out of absolutely everyone who publishes any sort of benchmark about their hardware ? What do they want for themselves, become a lawyer's cabinet like Oracle ?

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#159

Post by jwilk »

wtallis wrote: post #99
gammatrigono wrote: post #76

Time to disable automatic Windows Updates.

Windows automatic updates are one of the easier ways to get the new microcode without agreeing to the new license terms. But there are plenty of other reasons to disable Windows Update (not that Windows will respect your decision).

How do you keep the system secure without Windows Update enabled?

Re: Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

#160

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

lathiat wrote: post #6
0x8BADF00D wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is censorship, plain and simple. They cannot command everyone to abridge their speech, even if their license terms say so. It is unenforceable and illegal.

It's also crazy to my mind. The reality is these various issues are all having potentially significant impacts on performance -- and it's not just the microcode related changes, but also the kernel changes, etc. It is kind of ridiculous to require everyone to do their own testing and not allow basic numbers to be published. I also find it fascinating in that in theory your BIOS update can include these changes.. does…

This is a very good point. What about replacing a motherboard (but not CPU) due to motherboard failure or just to get some extra feature or other? If the new BIOS includes the microcode updates are you legally forbidden from benchmarking your old CPU?
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