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Microsoft disables Spectre mitigations as Intel’s patches cause instability

securityweek.com

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Re: Microsoft disables Spectre mitigations as Intel’s patches cause instability

#101

Post by morganvachon »

mseebach wrote: post #99
kilburn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the longest time there was no practical alternative, but nowadays... AMD is back! The whole Ryzen lineup has turned out to be pretty good. You may even save some money in the process.

Has AMD processors been confirmed as not vulnerable? As I recall the original investigation only covered Intel processors, but hypothesized that AMD would be affected as well, as they more or less have the same fundamentals around branch prediction.

CPUs from AMD are not vulnerable to Meltdown, but are vulnerable to both versions of Spectre.

https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/speculative-execution

Re: Microsoft disables Spectre mitigations as Intel’s patches cause instability

#102

Post by arkades »

segmondy wrote: post #88
giancarlostoro wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really telling that even Linus Torvalds was not happy with their "fixes" and now Microsoft. Intel needs to start taking the situation completely seriously cause their actions don't imply they are.

Intel doesn't care. What choice do we have?

I was specking out a new machine for my wife just as all this news broke. At this point, I’m obviously going AMD.

I mean, I’m not putting Intel out of business, but I have a -choice-.

Re: Microsoft disables Spectre mitigations as Intel’s patches cause instability

#103

Post by Valmar »

HugoDaniel wrote: post #51

So much for the embargo period. I guess the bsd people were not so wrong after all. They might as well just had published it as soon as it was found.

Intel has had literally months upon months to test and stabilize their microcode and kernel-side patches for Meltdown/Spectre... but it seems like Intel just doesn't give half a shit, if they're having major issues now.

Intel's actions seem to shout that they have cared far more about releasing Kaby/Skylake X and Coffee Lake in short order, as a response to Ryzen/ThreadRipper, than actually really digging into fixing their major security flaws. Their actions speak of them preferring to keep their market and mindshare over actually fixing any security issues.

Intel is still so deeply entrenched that they likely believe that they can get away with their lazy approach. They make millions upon millions, if not billions of dollars ~ why should they give a shit, when their monopoly and half-hearted attempt at a solution will get them by? Intel is being strangled by their shitty management, seemingly...

Re: Microsoft disables Spectre mitigations as Intel’s patches cause instability

#104

Post by executesorder66 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #92
segmondy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel doesn't care. What choice do we have?

Before Intel Core processors became the standard hot processor I was an AMD guy. I'm heading back towards that route. This means no Macbook or Surfacebook for my next development laptop for me. If anyone wants my money they better build a developer worthy laptop with an AMD processor and a sweet AMD graphics card. Also AMD is working on providing open source GPU Vulkan drivers.

> Also AMD is working on providing open source GPU Vulkan drivers.

They have already provided them:

https://github.com/GPUOpen-Drivers/AMDVLK

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amdvlk-r...

Re: Microsoft disables Spectre mitigations as Intel’s patches cause instability

#105

Post by AsyncAwait »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #92
segmondy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel doesn't care. What choice do we have?

Before Intel Core processors became the standard hot processor I was an AMD guy. I'm heading back towards that route. This means no Macbook or Surfacebook for my next development laptop for me. If anyone wants my money they better build a developer worthy laptop with an AMD processor and a sweet AMD graphics card. Also AMD is working on providing open source GPU Vulkan drivers.

This one [1] seems like a good choice in terms of performance, but certainly no MBP in terms of portability.

[1] - https://www.asus.com/uk/Laptops/ROG-Strix-GL702ZC

Re: Microsoft disables Spectre mitigations as Intel’s patches cause instability

#106

Post by jononor »

icebraining wrote: post #42
rocqua wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was about patches to the linux kernel, not the microcode patches.

Yes, but as far as I know Linus has made no comment on the microcode patches, so mm-vorticesoft is probably referring to the Spectre patches in general.

The microcode patches are binary blobs against a proprietary and secret ISA, how can anyone comment on their quality?

Re: Microsoft disables Spectre mitigations as Intel’s patches cause instability

#107

Post by watwut »

cornholio wrote: post #75
watwut wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those were not delivered fixes, that was work in progress that is still work in progress. And the dude who was "called out" works for Amazon.

So what you are saying is that Intel didn't bother to support Linux even with a crappy fix, like they did for Microsoft? Good to hear the Chinese are well supported though.

That is not what I said and not what situation implied. In situation where you have like zero factual information you went out of your way to make up most damaging possibility you could have.

Re: Microsoft disables Spectre mitigations as Intel’s patches cause instability

#108

Post by shiven »

morganvachon wrote: post #101
mseebach wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has AMD processors been confirmed as not vulnerable? As I recall the original investigation only covered Intel processors, but hypothesized that AMD would be affected as well, as they more or less have the same fundamentals around branch prediction.

CPUs from AMD are not vulnerable to Meltdown, but are vulnerable to both versions of Spectre. https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/speculative-execution

Damn! So, practically, no modern processor (or consumer laptop, or enterprise server) is safe from Spectre?

Time to go off the beaten path.

Re: Microsoft disables Spectre mitigations as Intel’s patches cause instability

#109

Post by rlpb »

mehrdadn wrote: post #82
tialaramex wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in principle what you've said about the Unix approach here is correct, if you upgrade one half of a system and not the other half and now they're talking different protocols, that might not work. But keep in mind that if your system can't cope with this what you've done there is engineer in unreliability, you've made a system that's deliberately not very robust, unless it's very, very tightly integrated (e.g. tw…

Aaaaaand here comes the Linux defending! OK... > But keep in mind that if your system can't cope with this what you've done there is engineer in unreliability It's weird that you're blaming my operating system's problems on me . "My system" is something a ton of other people wrote, and this is the case for pretty much every user of every OS. I'm not engineering anything into (or out of) my system so I don't get the "…

> ...but it happens more often than I would like that I update Linux (Ubuntu) and, lo and behold, I can't really use any programs until I reboot...

Ubuntu developer here. This doesn't happen to me in practice. Most updates don't cause system instability. I rarely reboot.

Firefox is the most noticeable thing. After updating Firefox (usually it's a security update), Firefox often starts misbehaving until restarted. But I am very rarely forced to restart the login session or the entire system. I should, to get updates to actually take effect, but as a developer I'm usually aware of the specifics, so I can afford to be more selective than the average user.

Are you sure you aren't comparing apples to oranges here, and are actually complaining about the stability of updates while running the development release, which involves ABIs changing and so forth?

Re: Microsoft disables Spectre mitigations as Intel’s patches cause instability

#110

Post by jhasse »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #105
giancarlostoro wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before Intel Core processors became the standard hot processor I was an AMD guy. I'm heading back towards that route. This means no Macbook or Surfacebook for my next development laptop for me. If anyone wants my money they better build a developer worthy laptop with an AMD processor and a sweet AMD graphics card. Also AMD is working on providing open source GPU Vulkan drivers.

This one [1] seems like a good choice in terms of performance, but certainly no MBP in terms of portability. [1] - https://www.asus.com/uk/Laptops/ROG-Strix-GL702ZC

For a portable laptop with AMD, this one will soon be available: https://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/consumer-notebook/ideapad/700s...
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