Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intel Publishes Microcode Patches, No Benchmarking or Comparison Allowed

perens.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 499 posts

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

#461

Post by Dylan16807 »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #367
gambiting wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OP is using the wrong term - breaching terms of contract is not illegal in itself. It just means Oracle will not do any more business with you.

Breaching terms of contract is most definitely illegal and Oracle can sue any time they want. It's not like trademark law, where you _have_ to sue even if you don't want to; Oracle can ignore anything that comes out not looking bad for them, which still being 100% able to sue the pants off of anyone that goes "hey look this product is worse across the board in real world comparisons to MySQL and MariaDB".

They can sue but it's not illegal, and they very well may not be able to get any money from you for truthful statements.

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

#462

Post by mjevans »

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…

My own speculation on this is that it's a complicated legal dance to allow a native to and manufactured in China "trusted" processor that is tolerable for use in higher security government (Chinese) computers and systems.

They might have also baked in slight tweaks or customized whatever back-doors could be included if such things exist...

It's better to think of it as a Chinese subsidiary in a franchise system.

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

#463

Post by kllrnohj »

wruza wrote: post #401
naasking wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I just tried to recycle my old i7-4770k from my gaming CPU to a home server. Only guess what? The 4770k doesn't have VT-d. The cheaper 4770 does have VT-d, so why did the more expensive, "upgraded" 4770k not have VT-d? Because Intel's product line is a disaster.

We're not talking minor performance differences in features, we're talking features randomly added and removed for no logical reason from the same generation & tier of CPU model.

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

#464

Post by kllrnohj »

repolfx wrote: post #383
HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Their arch is just different, they where not affected by meltdown and the chances of a spektre exploit actually working are very small. I don't know why that is the case but basically amd is 99% free from this story.

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.

That is a horrifically biased & wrong summary.

AMD enforce privilege checks at access time rather than at retirement time. Whether or not this is due to "lack of optimization" or "good security engineering" nobody knows. But your claims that this was purely the result of "less optimised [sic]" cores is nonsense. You have zero evidence whatsoever that that was the case vs. AMD just having superior engineering on this particular aspect and not adding bugs to their architecture.

All we know are that Intel & ARM CPUs have an entire category of security bugs that AMD don't, and that upon close analysis AMD's CPUs are operating in a more secure foundation.

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

#465

Post by naasking »

kllrnohj wrote: post #463
wruza wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just tried to recycle my old i7-4770k from my gaming CPU to a home server. Only guess what? The 4770k doesn't have VT-d. The cheaper 4770 does have VT-d, so why did the more expensive, "upgraded" 4770k not have VT-d? Because Intel's product line is a disaster. We're not talking minor performance differences in features, we're talking features randomly added and removed for no logical reason from the same generation…

Perfect example of what I was talking about. Their lineup has always seemed customized to maximize the need to buy more CPUs.

"Gamers need these features, but gamers often also setup servers. Let's remove server features from gaming CPUs so they can't reuse them when they upgrade, and so they have to buy new server CPUs!"

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

#466

Post by mywittyname »

tlb wrote: post #384
mywittyname wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AT&T's early dominance was the direct result of the invention of the transistor that came from their own labs. From then on, the company was committed to spending massive amounts of money into developing new technology. Even if AT&T didn't directly invent a new technology, they were still one of the few companies in the world that could actually afford to buy new toys and put them into the hands of researchers who wo…

That's not accurate. AT&T dominated telecommunications for decades before the transistor. Many of Bell Labs great scientific inventions predate the transistor, such as information theory.

Sure, but the transistor ushered in the long-distance era and helped AT&T establish their monopoly (and their eventual breakup). Regional telephone services were already beginning to drive down costs in local markets.

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

#467

Post by vel0city »

lawlessone wrote: post #219
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>Intel are still ahead in low power mobile CPU race, I never met a person with a smart phone that uses an intel chip. They probably exist but i know none. Apple aren't using them. Samsung aren't.. HTC nope.. Google pixel nope... Intel basically sold off/scuttled their mobile division right before the iphone took off.

FWIW, I owned an ASUS Zen Phone 2 which contained an Atom x86 processor. It worked pretty well. I sold it to a friend of a friend who I think still uses it today. That said, that processor line was discontinued.

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

#468

Post by late2part »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #381
late2part wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Bell Labs did not invent basically everything about the modern world.

yeah, part of it was invented at PARC

you down voters are not giving Al Gore enough credit.

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

#469

Post by cestith »

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…

I'm going with option #3. Intel sold me a warranted part without these terms. Now they're trying to alter an existing sale after the fact because they need to fix a defect under that warranty. I will do as I please with my property and they can talk to my attorneys.

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

#470

Post by noobermin »

lordlimecat wrote: post #332
senozhatsky wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Google innovate? -ss

Have you seen how many messaging apps theyve made in the last few years?

This is sarcasm right? Messaging apps are the height of "innovation?"
Post reply on HN