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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

#451

Post by Rafuino »

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…

The author updated the post. I'm guessing #1 (I work at Intel). Text and link below.

UPDATE: Intel has resolved their microcode licensing issue which I complained about in this blog post. The new license text is here (https://01.org/mcu-path-license-2018).

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

#452

Post by fivefive55 »

dragontamer wrote: post #407
holtalanm wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Check out the Huawei Matebook D with Ryzen if you want an amazingly built laptop for a great price. Might change your mind, it's the best 600 dollar laptop out there.

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

#453

Post by holtalanm »

fivefive55 wrote: post #452
dragontamer wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Check out the Huawei Matebook D with Ryzen if you want an amazingly built laptop for a great price. Might change your mind, it's the best 600 dollar laptop out there.

i actually thought about that one too. If they had a 16GB version, I'd totally go for it. Entirely the reason I'm leaning towards an HP Envy x360 13z instead.

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

#454

Post by iforgotpassword »

josemanuel wrote: post #272
iforgotpassword wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot deliver competitive quality, performance and pricing right away, completely agree. But there's generally a threshold to how much more expensive it can be in the beginning, and more importantly, how much you benefit from it. The problem here is that only few people even understand the problems with what Intel does, and even fewer people care. My games still run fine so why should I care? HN is a real echo c…

But riscV processors will always be closed source. so you cannot crowdsource vulnerability finding...

Why would they always be closed source?

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

#455

Post by deaddodo »

kscz wrote: post #419
djsumdog wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kinda curious to see how Zhaoxin, Hygon and other manufacturers in the x86_64 space are going to play out. It would be nice to see some real competition, not just Intel vs AMD, in this space. There are other services like Packet that offer bare-metal hosting on small Atom and ARM processors. It'd be nice to see some alt x86 processors in this space.

Hygon is just AMD's EPYC CPU [0]. I am uncertain if they will differentiate themselves more as time goes on, but at the moment almost the only difference in the kernel is that it has a different name. I think you're more likely to see some ARM CPUs which have comparable performance to low-end and mid-range x86 before you see a new x86 competitor [1] - the overhead to making x86 perform well is just so high that I can…

> despite the theoretical benefits of entering into the datacenter CPU market, they've never made that leap (though I don't know enough about their history to know if they tried).

They haven't, they instead entered the niche of low-cost kiosk hardware. Intel and AMD completely abandoned it due to lower profit margins, but plenty of raw sales numbers to help Via float by.

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

#456

Post by johnchristopher »

onli wrote: post #351
johnchristopher wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you loathe Intel after all the lies they have been telling and marketing speaks, you should buy AMD. > If you love Intel still after all, you should still buy AMD, teach them a painful lesson to wake them up. But how do I choose which AMD CPU I need ? Back in my youth p4 and athlon were easy to compare (freq., IPS and a modifier because AMD) but now I can't even tell the differences between any i5/3/7 and when I…

The right answer to this is to look into benchmarks. It now works again to compare Intel and AMD clocks, but only of the current generation, and then there is core count and motherboard prices to consider, so on. A project of mine is a hardware recommender, it also includes a meta-benchmark. I collect published benchmarks and build a globally sorted order of processors out of it. https://www.pc-kombo.com/benchmark/ga…

Pretty cool project. Thanks :).

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

#457

Post by textmode »

For discussion...

Question: Are these license restrictions on right to disclose benchmarks enforceable?

Question: If they are enforceable, do licensors ever try to enforce them? If not, why?

A little background here: https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/

For example, this has been posted to HN at least twice recently:

https://clemenswinter.com/2018/07/09/how-to-analyze-billions...

Question: Was the author subject to any restrictions on publication? If yes, did the author seek "permission" from the licensor to publish these findings?

Excerpts from some of the licenses:

2.2. 32 Bit Kdb+ Software Use Restrictions

(c) 32 Bit Kdb+ Software Evaluations. User shall not distribute or otherwise make available to any third party any report regarding the performance of the 32 Bit Kdb+ Software, 32 Bit Kdb+ Software benchmarks or any information from such a report unless User receives the express prior written consent of Kx to disseminate such report or information.

kdb+ on demand - Personal Edition [64-bit]

1.3 Kdb+ On Demand Software Performance. End User shall not distribute or otherwise make available to any third party any report regarding the performance of the Kdb+ On Demand Software, Kdb+ On Demand Software benchmarks or any information from such a report unless End User receives the express, prior written consent of Kx to disseminate such report or information.

This Kdb+ Software Academic Use License Agreement ("Agreement") is made between Kx Systems, Inc. ("Kx") and you, the University, or employee of the University ("End User") with respect to Kx's 64 bit Kdb+ Software and any related documentation that is made available to you in (jointly, the "Kdb+ Software"). You agree to use the Kdb+ Software under the terms and conditions set forth below. This Agreement is effective upon you clicking the "I agree" button below.

1. LISCENSE GRANTS [sic]

1.4 Kdb+ Software Evaluations. End User shall not distribute or otherwise make available to any third party any report regarding the performance of the Kdb+ Software, Kdb+ Software benchmarks or any information from such a report unless End User receives the express, prior written consent of Kx to disseminate such report or information.

Kdb+ software end-user agreement:

By accessing the Kdb+ Software via the Google platform, you are agreeing to be bound by these terms and conditions (which may be updated from time to time) and to the extent you are acting on behalf of a permitted organization that you have authority to act on their behalf and bind them to these terms and conditions.

You may not access the Kdb+ Software if you are a direct competitor of Kx.

4. Benchmark Test Results. User agrees not to disclose benchmark, test or performance information regarding the Kdb+ Software to any third party except as explicitly authorized by Kx in writing.

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

#458

Post by sitkack »

gargravarr wrote: post #341
theandrewbailey wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm seriously considering AMD for the graphics card too (currently running a GTX 970) Me too. I was running Intel+Nvidia rigs for about ten years, up until last year, when I got a Ryzen 1800X and (this year) a Radeon 7970. Nvidia hasn't been the most ethically behaved as of late (whether it's more or less than Intel, I haven't figured out). Intel will be releasing a discrete GPU in a year or two; who knows how fast…

Same, I had bad experiences with the early Athlons and bought Intels after that, never had any stability problems. But now I'm seeing douchey behaviour from both Intel and nVidia. I've been a big fanboy because of the performance, but the business practises are becoming polarising, and AMD seems to have caught up or surpassed in performance terms. Plus, they handled the vulnerabilities disclosure much better (even a…

> AMD made their entire business model off copying (later licensing)

Intel contracted AMD to second source their processors as a requirement for being in the IBM PC (requirement dictated by IBM).

AMD existed long before their version of the x86, producing the venerable http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/2901/ which was widely used in minicomputers of the time.

The amazing thing about the 2901 and family, was that the engineer could design a board level CPU and full freedom over register sizes, numbers, alus, etc.

Don't forget that the 64 bit x86 ISA was created by AMD and licensed to Intel.

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

#459

Post by crunchlibrarian »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #213
headmelted wrote: post #50

Before Zen, we all kind of assumed they were so far ahead that AMD were more likely to be out of business before they would ever be a credible threat again. I actually thought Intel must have had some tricks up their sleeves in terms of performance gains that we hadn't seen yet, simply because there was no market need to roll them out and they had so many years of coasting on marginal gains. Seeing them taking this s…

Intel are still ahead in low power mobile (laptop) CPU race, and the clear leader in the laptop market. Who knows for how long, though?

Not at all, they bungled low power bigly with the atom trainwreck and are so far behind ARM now that they have given up competing.

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

#460

Post by dragontamer »

holtalanm wrote: post #411
dragontamer wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the new HP Envy x360 13z doesn't look bad. Kind of waiting to see what the Lenovo ThinkPad A285 looks like, as well.

The HP Envy x360 has a noticeably worse screen though. Its definitely not the same class or caliber as the Spectre x360.

That's what I'm talking about: most laptop manufacturers offer a "premium" Intel laptop. But then they have a lower-quality AMD one on the side.

Nothing AMD has done wrong per se, just laptop manufacturers refuse to sell AMD on the high-end.

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