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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

#401

Post by wruza »

naasking wrote: post #325
ksec wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but now I can't even tell the differences between any i5/3/7 and when I look at AMD names it's as confusing but with a different lingo. They way I see it, I could look at AMD's Core count, Threads and Frequency, As they are clearly labelled, and that is it. On Intel's side you have features turned on and off for different i3/5/7/9, AVX speed difference etc I don't even want to bother looking it up.

> On Intel's side you have features turned on and off for different i3/5/7/9, AVX speed difference etc I don't even want to bother looking it up. Seriously, Intel has always been way too confusing with their processor lineup. AMD has always been straightforward: leave in the kitchen sink on nearly every CPU and performance scales with price. Not linearly of course, but it's much simpler to choose an AMD CPU.

I don’t get it. You just look at popular apps&games benchmarks and decide your hw stack. You don’t need to synth-bench AVX differences unless you’re writing bleeding edge specialized software that depends on it.

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

#402

Post by Symmetry »

simion314 wrote: post #337
coherentpony wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...and are not affected by speculative execution AMD's chips definitely speculatively execute instructions. It's a common performance trick. AMD's chips also definitely throw an exception at retirement (of course) for instructions that attempt to load a privileged address, just like Intel's chips do. The difference is that when AMD's chips see a load instruction, the load isn't executed until it knows that the addr…

>The difference is that when AMD's chips see a load instruction, the load isn't executed until it knows that the address isn't privileged. Intel's chips do execute the load (but then throw away the result when it realises the address was privileged) Thank you for the detailed explanation, can't we conclude that AMD engineering is more defensive then Intel, this is what I concluded.

The general reaction from CPU designers I interact with online after this was that Intel engineers should have known the optimizations that enabled Meltdown were dangerous but that Specter was totally unforeseeable.

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

#403

Post by Symmetry »

gnulinux wrote: post #309
eps wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, AMD currently has better CPUs for high-performance computing, so OP's users would benefit from this public service announcement, if anything.

I thought it was the opposite of that? That is, AMD chips are currently great for most workloads but Intel still has a definite edge in working with big vectors of floating point numbers of the sort you usually encounter in HPC. Mostly because their core's vector units are 512 instead of 256 bits wide.

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

#404

Post by coldtea »

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…

>Bell Labs invented Google, Facebook, etc? Wow, did not know that.

Compared to what they invented, Google and Facebook are insignificant in comparison.

We could go back to Altavista and no-Facebook and we'd be more or less fine.

Giving back the Bell Labs technlogy would be a much harder hit...

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

#405

Post by topspin »

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 the way. The tech press isn't powerless here.

The media that has been performing such benchmarks for decades and have thus earned a large and faithful audience can organize and simultaneously publish the relevant benchmarks in the US, complete with an unapologetic disclosure right at the top as to the why this is happening. Put Intel into the position of suing every significant member of the US tech media and create a 1st amendment case, or perhaps try to single out some member and create a living martyr to which we can offer our generous gofundme legal defense contributions over the decade it takes to progress through the courts. Either way Intel creates a PR disaster for itself.

Sack up and call their bluff. There are MILLIONS of people that will stand behind that courage. At some point the share holders will feel it and this nasty crap will end.

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

#406

Post by Symmetry »

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…

In 2014 I would certainly assume (1) as well but Intel has been getting less and less open and also more and more willing to creatively stretch the truth in their marketing over the last few years in a worrying way. Currently I think (2) is about equally as likely as (1).

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

#407

Post by dragontamer »

holtalanm wrote: post #334
dhimes wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in the market for a new rig- looks like I'll be going with AMD.

same. i _was_ looking at getting an HP Spectre x360 with the i7 8550U. Now, I'm going to look explicitly at laptops with Ryzen chips. I think the Spectre might have a Ryzen model, but don't know.

AMD is severely behind on the Laptop space.

In the Desktop space, I can definitely recommend AMD. But Laptops are totally Intel right now.

There are AMD Laptops, but they are hard to recommend. Most are low-end offerings at best (laptop manufacturers don't put the high-end stuff with AMD). As long as high-end HP / Dell / Lenovo / Asus / Acer / Apple / Microsoft Surface are all Intel-based, you're basically forced to use an Intel Laptop.

Desktops... you can build your own. And even if you couldn't, there are a ton of custom computer builders out there making great AMD Desktop rigs.

-------------

With that being said, AMD laptops are competitive in the $500 to $750 space. Low-end to mid-tier laptops... the ones with poor mouse controls, driver issues, bad keyboards, low-end screens and such.

But hey, they're cheap.

Its not really AMD's fault. But in any case, its hard for me to find a good AMD laptop. So... that's just how it is.

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

#408

Post by kashyapc »

chx wrote: post #271
kashyapc wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my guess would be it's #1 too; I can't believe that Intel can be so naive that no one on the internet will benchmark the performance—given how all these nasty CVEs are raising such a stink. Serious customers will demand performance numbers; you can't simply answer them with "blocked due to legal".

I am not a lawyer but I question whether this is enforceable in the USA and I do not question, rather state this is not enforceable in the EU. All click-though / shrink-wrap licensing the end user is forced to or has to accept automatically is invalid.

Regardless of the details of enforceability, this just sends the wrong message to the rest of the industry and community, and doesn't inspire confidence in Intel.

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

#410

Post by mark-r »

likeclockwork wrote: post #394
repolfx wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't. Spectre works fine on AMD. They avoided Meltdown only because their cores are less optimised. Meltdown isn't Intel specific - Apple cores were also affected. It's clear that AMD weren't doing anything special w.r.t. side channel attacks. They were just further behind in the optimisation race and as a consequence, were less hit.

Can you really call "fast but wrong/insecure" optimized?

Yes you can, if it makes your benchmarks look better. That's why Intel is trying to suppress the benchmarks.
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