Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by Jonnax » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 9:02 AM UTC

eps wrote: post #138

bluecalm wrote: post #100

Here is one thing we can do about it: make public service announcement to our users that we no longer recommend Intel CPUs because of security holes, censorship and crippled performance. I am going to do that today. While we only have several thousand users they do CPU intensive work, buy a lot of new CPUs and rent a lot of servers. My small contribution will likely amount to low-mid 6 figures out of Intel pocket in…

This amounts to little more than making a statement at the expense of your users. It would've carried that much more weight if it were _your_ low-mid 6 figures that were redirected away from Intel.

Intel isn't really that much far ahead to say that users are going to be negatively affected.

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

#162

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 9:04 AM UTC

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…

> I cannot wait until it becomes viable to escape the toxicity of companies such as Intel and Microsoft.

This has been "viable" for a long time now. Ignore the FUD and just try it for yourself. You might be pleasantly surprised.

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

#163

Post by wtallis » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 9:07 AM UTC

jwilk wrote: post #159

wtallis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

All of the Windows machines that I use for work are firewalled and have no internet access, primarily so that they won't interrupt my work with fucking updates, but security is a nice side effect. My personal Windows machine has updates enabled because I don't mind if it reboots when my back is turned, and my Linux and OS X machines can be trusted to ask before rebooting to apply updates.

Microsoft has provided no real alternatives for those of us who need to be able to keep a Windows machine running overnight.

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

#164

Post by chrisper » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 9:15 AM UTC

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #162

theprotocol wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

• 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…

> I cannot wait until it becomes viable to escape the toxicity of companies such as Intel and Microsoft. This has been "viable" for a long time now. Ignore the FUD and just try it for yourself. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Especially now with Valve's Proton.

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

#165

Post by minusSeven » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 9:17 AM UTC

This is why need more regulations so companies can't pull this shit....

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

#166

Post by stavros » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 9:20 AM UTC

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. ---…

That's not how you do signing at all. You just use your private key to sign something, publish the public key for verification, and, when you want to reveal yourself, you just sign "I am X" with that key.

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

#167

Post by cm2187 » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 9:20 AM UTC

TheRealPomax wrote: post #61

amluto wrote: post #13

I can think of two theories: 1. It's a mistake. Someone in legal got carried away. 2. The performance of the L1TF mitigation is so awful that someone at Intel thought it would be a good idea to try to keep the performance secret. (Which leads to option 2b. The performance of the L1TF mitigation is so awful that somemone at Intel is afraid that Intel could be sued as a result, and they want to mitigate that risk.) I w…

It works for Oracle (it is famously illegal to publish benchmarks of DB2 vs other engines), I'm sure intel can make it work for them thanks to Oracle's court case(s).

But you can't buy an oracle license in a shop around the corner. It is going to be hard for intel to enforce it.

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

#168

Post by abainbridge » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 9:23 AM UTC

dzdt wrote: post #139

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.

But CPU+FPGA will forever be a tiny niche, right? I don't see any path where mainstream programs get a boost from FPGA.

That depends what you mean by mainstream. These days the cloud data centre is a mainstream market for hardware vendors. In that environment FPGAs can make sense. They might have advantages in throughput, latency, power consumption, security (no spectre), reliability (no software updates). For example, Microsoft use them for Azure virtual networking, machine learning and something inside Bing. You can imagine a world where every blade server has an FPGA. In fact, you can imagine a world where many blade servers have an FPGA and only a small support CPU.

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

#169

Post by Rjevski » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 9:26 AM UTC

dzdt wrote: post #139

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.

But CPU+FPGA will forever be a tiny niche, right? I don't see any path where mainstream programs get a boost from FPGA.

I can see there being a market for that. The reason nobody uses FPGAs at the moment is because nobody has them outside of specialized applications.

If Intel can release a CPU with a built-in FPGA and everyone has one, software developers will take advantage of them. I can see stuff like video editing programs, compression algorithms, etc taking advantage of that.

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

#170

Post by wolfgke » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 9:27 AM UTC

stavros wrote: post #166

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. ---…

That's not how you do signing at all. You just use your private key to sign something, publish the public key for verification, and, when you want to reveal yourself, you just sign "I am X" with that key.

OK, thanks for the correction. Much better, indeed. :-)