Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw

#281

Post by throwaway613834 » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

cornholio wrote: post #178

golfer wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can sue anyone else at any time. If you think Intel isn't going to be sued for this, you're wrong.

It depends on how they handle user compensation. Going by the FDIV precedent, they should typically replace all defective products for free, and they will be in the clear. What I meant was that the presence of the bug itself is not a valid cause, for example you can't claim that due to the error you lost 1 trillion dollars via a software hack - even if it's true. If Intel can prove they acted ethically when disclosin…

How do they replace defective products? Or more specifically how do you get your laptop CPU replaced if Intel offers a replacement for free?

Re: Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw

#282

Post by cortesoft » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #262

cortesoft wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but how often that happens is workload dependent. Basically, how often is your code making syscalls.

But don't all FS accesses (e.g., write to socket, read from DB) require a syscall? In that case, basically all web applications would be affected. Or am I completely off the mark?

No, you are correct. Really, every application will be affected, they all make some syscalls. How much will vary, though.

Re: Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw

#283

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

awesomevibes1 wrote: post #229

InTheArena wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not. APFS just does a lot more then HFS, so there is a huge performance impact on disk related issues before this change goes in. This is a all hands on deck kind of situation. Apple doesn't usually do well with security firedrills like this.

I hope somebody on Twitter has informed Apple about this.

Unless they live in a bubble, I’m sure most people at Apple are already aware of this.

Re: Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw

#284

Post by baq » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

InTheArena wrote: post #125

api wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people have noticed that High Sierra is slower than Sierra, specifically for filesystem operations with APFS. I wonder if Apple knew about this ahead of time and this explains the overhead?

Probably not. APFS just does a lot more then HFS, so there is a huge performance impact on disk related issues before this change goes in. This is a all hands on deck kind of situation. Apple doesn't usually do well with security firedrills like this.

If work in NT and Linux kernels started on November, they must know. Intel must've told them, the alternative of Apple learning about this from a third party and grilling them over it would be too scary.

Re: Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw

#285

Post by cmiles74 » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

dsign wrote: post #49

Here are some numbers quantifying the problem. Big caveats apply as they are very preliminary, but the hit due to the software patches looks extremely significant: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-41...

I wonder if we'll see some performance return as subsequent patches are produced. I can't tell from the coverage so far if this is possible.

Re: Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw

#286

Post by cookiecaper » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

Brockenstein wrote: post #218

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #191

Does anybody know if the 30% performance reduction would apply to Macbook pros from within the past 2 years?

They run Intel CPUs made within the last ten years so would be subject to this issue. But the performance hit is really dependent on the computing that you're doing. It's not a guaranteed 30% or a guaranteed 5%. Are you doing a lot of really CPU intensive tasks that make a lot of syscalls? Most people aren't. If you are, you'll probably feel that pain. And if you're not, you probably won't notice a difference. And if…

> They run Intel CPUs made within the last ten years so would be subject to this issue.

Do we know that? There is a lot of speculation but the embargo is not lifted yet afaik. There are obviously elements of this that are remaining intentionally obscured pending embargo expiry (redacted comments), so it could be that a smaller contingent of chips are affected and no one is bothering to correct the damage/limit the patch only to applicable components so that the cat doesn't get out of the bag too soon (side benefit: so that an extensive emergency fix like this can be widely tested before it's applied to a relatively limited set of hardware).

Seems just as valid as any other speculation to me.

Re: Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw

#287

Post by tdb7893 » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

sooheon wrote: post #48

mindcrime wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems debatable. From what I recall, at least some news about this issue was already public before he sold his shares. And what would be illegal would be trading based on information that isn't public. OTOH, since details are still dribbling out, you could possibly argue that the Intel CEO had more complete information than the public. The sell could also have been scheduled in advance, which would - AFAIK - not viol…

Unless the advance scheduling is completely binding, I don't see why that should sidestep insider trading. What's to stop these guys from always having a cascading series of sells and buys 6 mo. in advance, and just cancelling them?

The orders registered with the SEC and all these cancellations would attract a lot of their attention. I have no doubt they would see through it pretty easily once they started investigating

Re: Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw

#288

Post by jfoutz » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

sli wrote: post #255

Splines wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For some reason I can’t reply to ‘chrisper’ HN doesn't let you do this to new comments to avoid back-and-forth commenting that is typical in flamewars.

Coming up on 9 years here and I'm still finding out new things about how this site works. I've been wondering recently why some comments aren't replyable.

I think there is a time delay. Wait a few minutes or hours and you can reply. That cooling off period has helped me really think through my replies.

Re: Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw

#289

Post by tedunangst » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

cma wrote: post #182

zelos wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quiet, you're spoiling the narrative we're imposing on semi-random, chaotic events.

To add another point: NVDA is up 5% and doesn't have the same direct competitive narrative. If money has to be spent rectifying the issue with new or more CPUs due to performance loss, that's less money available for spending on Nvidia GPUs. It might tip a few marginal applications in favor of eating the development costs to migrate to GPGPU, but that effect isn't likely nearly as high, especially if applications wit…

Chipotle is also up 5%. All these engineers are going to need lots of burritos to eat.

Re: Intel Confronts Potential ‘PR Nightmare’ With Reported Chip Flaw

#290

Post by autokad » Wed, Jan 03, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

panarky wrote: post #244

mtanski wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned in the other thread yesterday database and database like applications are going to be hit particular hard. Even more so on fast flash storage. Double whammy compared to apps just doing network IO. And while databases try to minimize the number of syscalls they still end up doing a lot of them for read, writeout, flush.

How would you trade this knowledge? Intel has already dropped and AMD is up. Maybe there's more to move, but first-order effects are at least partially priced in already. But what about second-order effects? Seems like virtualization should be vulnerable (VMWare and Citrix), but maybe they actually benefit as customers add more capacity. Software-defined networking and cloud databases should also suffer though it's u…

First and foremost, dont buy Intel stock. This doesnt help, but I long considered Intel as a company that doesnt know what they are doing. Here is why:

I owned Intel back in 2010 when they bought McAfee for 7.8 billion. They said the future of CPU's and chip tech was embedding security on the chip. the real answer was mobile and gpus.

Not only did I immediately know this was a horrendous deal, it clearly showed that the CEO and management had no clue on their own market's desires and direction. At the time, I was hoping they were going to buy Nvidia, it would have been a larger target to digest at 10 bil, but doable by Intel at the time.

The MacAfee purchase turned out to be one of the worst large cooperate purchases in history. Had they invested the 7.8 billion $ blindly into an sp500 index fund, their investment would be worth ~19-20 billion.