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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

#311

Post by gnulinux »

mcv wrote: post #263
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. ---…

> Doesn't this show that it is time for someone to set up some kind of "ScienceLeaks" website Good idea, but I doubt it's necessary here. I'm fairly sure this sort of EULA clause is unenforceable in many jurisdictions. Run the benchmarks in a country where they are legal.

If that's the case would it be ok to publish these results in US-based websites such as Phoronix, even if they're done by other country's citizens in that other country?

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

#312

Post by lucb1e »

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…

After it blows up I'm sure they'll claim it's the former, regardless of the latter.

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

#313

Post by api »

sverige wrote: post #310

> I'm not blaming Intel for this, I don't know if Intel could have foreseen the problem. The potential security issues with out of order processing were noted publicly at least as far back as 2007. The problem is that, on the whole, the entire industry doesn't really give a shit about security until it's too late, which is exactly the wrong time to start. I don't foresee this changing anytime soon. It will be interes…

Nobody is thinking about security and AI. I wonder how long it will be before someone images a neural net embedded into some product and then figures out how to trick it into behaving in some way that attacks some internal part of the program hosting it. I'm imagining things like images than when shown to image classifiers cause the classifier neural network to buffer overflow the conventional program hosting it and inject shellcode.

Many types of neural networks are Turing-complete and are written in C by academics with no security experience. Fun times ahead.

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

#314

Post by beavis2 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #298
jenscow wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There had been many times I've started in the morning, expecting to work on the results of whatever process I left to run, only to be greeted with an empty desktop. When I review the update settings, they're as negative as I can make them. I shouldn't complain too much, sometimes it kindly starts Visual Studio for me, saving me 20 seconds. It could have asked, or even warned that I'd be wasting my time setting up the…

My favorite story about that: I worked in furnace optimization, giant electric arc furnaces that use half the electrical capacity of a small town generation plant. These things use 'pencil leads' the width of a child, meters long, that strike an electric spark an inch or two in diameter and 12 inches long, from the probe to the pile of recycled steel in the crucible. Melt it for new steel. Anyway we had a PC running…

I like those stories.

Although in this case, it's possible to disable power saving.

(or have they stopped that, too?)

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

#315

Post by rsync »

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. ---…

"Doesn't this show that it is time for someone to set up some kind of ..."

I don't think this is necessary ...

I think "circumventing" this benchmarking restriction is as simple as having one person purchase an Intel CPU and just drop it on the ground somewhere ... and have another person pick it up off of the street (no purchase, no EULA, no agreement entered into) and decide to benchmark the found item against other items.

"I found a chip on the ground that had these markings and numbers on it and here is how it performed against an AMD model."

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

#316

Post by catamorphismic »

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…

Very good point. I'd like to add that this is not just kind of ridiculous, it is just plain ridiculous. Also, we have the right to publish any benchmark numbers, not just basic numbers. This isn't a time for weak wording.

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

#317

Post by ballenf »

ddtaylor wrote: post #73
lathiat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the license specifically says you will not permit a third party to either. I don't really speak legalese, but does permit include having to then make all of your own users agree not to to avoid a penalty? As mentioned in the other comment thread though, I imagine the reality of this clause is to prevent media outlets (such as Phoronix who would traditionally do exactly this kind of benchmarking) from downloading…

> 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!

Not only that but standard development processes involve testing code against different environments.

Comparing arbitrary code execution times on this platform versus another could easily be called 'benchmarking'.

It's just so strange to sell a general purpose processor but then prohibit certain types of code depending on the state of mind of the developer. The same block of code could be permitted or prohibited based on the intent. It's nuts and a legal morass that is hard to imagine any lawyer proposing as a good idea.

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

#318

Post by jrockway »

nutjob2 wrote: post #295
gameswithgo wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wasn't bell labs part of a very big corporation when they invented basically everything about the modern world?

Bell Labs invented Google, Facebook, etc? Wow, did not know that. But as you say, the labs were a very small, independent part of a very big corporation, which is likely why they did interesting things. The other thing is that they were forced by the government to license transistor patents to others, who actually created almost everything else. By your theory the military invented the internet, so they invented the…

Google and Facebook would look a lot different without transistors.

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

#319

Post by rebelwebmaster »

glenneroo wrote: post #211
lagadu wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also if you get the update via windows update you get the patch without having ever agreed to the no-benchmarking clause, so you're free to publish anyway.

Windows Updates used to pop up an EULA to be agreed upon before installing certain anti-malware related software, not sure if that's the case anymore with Windows 10 auto-install-and-reboot procedure. I wonder if Intel could/would try to have Microsoft insert another click-to-agree EULA for this upcoming patch?

I got the Win10 update yesterday and didn't have to accept any sort of license first.

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

#320

Post by HelloNurse »

wtallis wrote: post #27
eight_ender wrote: post #12

Has Intel just outlawed any review website (gaming, enthusiast, etc) from ever posting benchmarks of their CPUs again? I feel like they didn't think this through.

If we tech journalists were actually seriously concerned that Intel would be dumb enough to try to enforce those provisions against us, then we'd just ask the motherboard vendors for updated pre-release firmware that incorporates the new microcode but doesn't come with Intel's license agreement attached. We often go that route anyways because it's easier to update the motherboard than to ensure that every OS you're t…

It's easier, you can post bar graphs where Intel processors are listed as "presumably very bad". Just to remind the public that they should expect the worst because Intel has something to hide.
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