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posted by mrpg on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the ??? dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Hoping the Meltdown and Spectre security problems might mean Intel would be buying you a shiny new computer after a chip recall? Sorry, ain't gonna happen.

Intel famously paid hundreds of millions of dollars to recall its Pentium processors after the 1994 discovery of the "FDIV bug" that revealed rare but real calculation errors. Meltdown and Spectre are proving similarly damaging to Intel's brand, sending the company's stock down more than 5 percent.

[...] But Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said the new problems are much more easily fixed -- and indeed are already well on their way to being fixed, at least in the case of Intel-powered PCs and servers. Intel said Thursday that 90 percent of computers released in the last 5 years will have fixes available by the end of next week. "This is very very different from FDIV," Krzanich said, criticizing media coverage of Meltdown and Spectre as overblown. "This is not an issue that is not fixable... we're seeing now the first iterations of patches."

Source: Nope, no Intel chip recall after Spectre and Meltdown, CEO says


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:09AM (16 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:09AM (#618708)

    I've been getting the impression more and more tech people are getting fed up with the way they are treated by intel, perhaps a flippening to AMD is in the future? I hear very little about how AMD are mistreating people. This would still be years down the road as purchase decisions are made, etc in any case.

    Actually nVidia too with their hobbling of 16 bit calculations, is AMD doing similar with their GPUs?

  • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:23AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:23AM (#618712)

    Ohhhhh! I can see it, I can see it! I twisted my head sideways and I see it! The Tower! It's there! So that's it! Your bare bootysnap was transformed into a bouncehouse by the very cabbage patch kids you scammed! They're bouncing off and tickling every ass molecule...!

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:36PM (13 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:36PM (#618778) Journal

    Flipping between Intel and AMD is like flipping between republicans and democrats. (You can discuss amongst yourselves which is which.) There's just not enough difference to make it worth the effort. Intel's somewhat better compatibility with most things and lower temperatures make it the basically superior choice. You'll have to write off the other bullshit until a suitable alternative comes along. Maybe somebody will revive the Alpha, the best chip we ever had.

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    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:12PM (9 children)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:12PM (#618798)

      That's a terrible analogy. The Dems and Reps are somewhat equal competitors, in terms of number of dedicated voters, funding, etc. Which one is dominant flips every decade or so. Intel vs. AMD is very different: AMD is a fraction of Intel's size and sales volume. AMD has *never* been dominant, it's just too small. AMD doesn't even make its own chips, it has to outsource them to a foundry whereas Intel has all their own fabs. Intel vs. AMD is more like General Motors vs. Lotus.

      I don't know where you get the idea that Intel has better compatibility with anything; they both use the same ISA, and can run all the same software. No, they can't drop into each other's sockets, but all the sockets are entirely proprietary and change every chip generation anyway, so it's irrelevant: a motherboard has to be designed explicitly for a particular CPU family and socket. I don't keep up on the very latest in the CPU wars, so I can't really speak to "lower temperatures", but Intel with its own fabs and leading fab technology generally has had superior power consumption figures, however this bug may change that if it means the workaround will cause your computer to take ~30% more time to do the same work. That could easily make up for any lead that Intel has with power consumption (MIPS/Watt).

      The main problem I see with AMD from my perspective is simple availability: show me a business laptop with an AMD CPU. I don't think they exist. Thinkpads don't have them, Dell Latitudes don't have them, etc. I don't use a desktop any more (I don't play FPS games, so I might as well have a PC I can carry places with me), and I don't want a consumer-grade laptop.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Saturday January 06 2018, @07:26PM (2 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday January 06 2018, @07:26PM (#618852) Journal

        I don't keep up on the very latest in the CPU wars, so I can't really speak to "lower temperatures", but Intel with its own fabs and leading fab technology generally has had superior power consumption figures

        One problem is that like AMD and friends before it being stuck on the 28nm node for years (while AMD was also pushing out iterations of its crappy Bulldozer microarchitecture), Intel has been stuck [wikipedia.org] on 14nm for years. 10nm Cannonlake is finally coming sometime this year. It's not just the switch from "Tick-Tock" to "Process-Architecture-Optimization" [soylentnews.org], there is another year of delay thrown in [arstechnica.com].

        But the X-nm numbers are just numbers anyway. While Intel is quick to point out that their fabrication techniques are superior to the competition's [soylentnews.org], that might not matter if Intel is on 10nm, while GlobalFoundries (which makes the chips for AMD), Samsung and others are on "inferior" 7nm.

        AMD is rumored to be refreshing the Ryzen line with "12nm" [soylentnews.org] desktop chips around March [hothardware.com].

        Specifically on temperatures, I remember Skylake-X running hotter than AMD's Ryzen/Threadripper. Intel seemed to have rushed chips with higher core counts to compete with AMD dropping CPUs with 8-16 cores, 16-32 threads at cutthroat prices.

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        • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @06:26AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @06:26AM (#619034)

          You are a moron, an unadulterated, pure idiot. The subject was about Specter and Meltdown. NOT about who has smallest dick. Pay attention, shithead.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Saturday January 06 2018, @08:50PM (1 child)

        by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 06 2018, @08:50PM (#618867)

        Ryzen laptops are only just now coming out. It'll be a few more months before we see more variety.

        Here's one with the Ryzen 5 2500U: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA7AB6R41478 [newegg.com]
        If you want a LOT of cpu in a laptop there is this monster: http://store.asus.com/us/item/201711AM170000001 [asus.com]

        Here's an article talking about the sparse options and an upcoming release for the Ryzen 7 2700u: https://liliputing.com/2017/12/acer-swift-3-laptop-ryzen-7-2700u-coming-soon.html [liliputing.com]

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      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by linkdude64 on Saturday January 06 2018, @09:24PM

        by linkdude64 (5482) on Saturday January 06 2018, @09:24PM (#618881)

        " No, they can't drop into each other's sockets, but all the sockets are entirely proprietary and change every chip generation anyway, so it's irrelevant"

        I'd like to interject for a moment and state that AMD has far more support for their sockets than Intel does. There is no Intel generational compatibility whatsoever, however I am actually half-planning on upgrading to Ryzen+ once it becomes available for higher IPC, and I will not need to change my motherboard out to do so - something impossible to do with Intel.

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday January 08 2018, @02:19PM (2 children)

        by urza9814 (3954) on Monday January 08 2018, @02:19PM (#619505) Journal

        The main problem I see with AMD from my perspective is simple availability: show me a business laptop with an AMD CPU. I don't think they exist. Thinkpads don't have them, Dell Latitudes don't have them, etc. I don't use a desktop any more (I don't play FPS games, so I might as well have a PC I can carry places with me), and I don't want a consumer-grade laptop.

        Eh, right now they're all Intel but that also flips periodically -- and hopefully it will in response to this issue. The old Dell Vostro business line was AMD -- I've still got mine running, although it's now repurposed as a headless server.

        • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday January 08 2018, @06:19PM (1 child)

          by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday January 08 2018, @06:19PM (#619615)

          I don't know anything about the Vostros, but IMO a business laptop isn't worth it if it's really just a more expensive consumer-grade laptop, with the same crappy keyboard and chassis, which is what I suspect they'd do with AMD chips.

          • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday January 08 2018, @07:29PM

            by urza9814 (3954) on Monday January 08 2018, @07:29PM (#619652) Journal

            The chassis was the best laptop chassis I've ever had for under a grand...nothing spectacular, but it survived a fair bit of abuse. The hinges started to get pretty stiff around year three, but considering that it was literally the cheapest laptop they offered, three years seemed reasonable.

            The keyboard was garbage, but so is every laptop keyboard AFAICT. At least it wasn't this "chicklet" style garbage that everyone uses these days...

            And it was over a hundred bucks cheaper than an Intel system for comparable specs, which is half the reason I bought it. The other half was that it was the only systems they sold in plain black without all kinds of brightly colored designs and shit.

            And the one other benefit of the business lines is the support. With regular Dell support you'll spend hours and hours and hours on hold and on the phone with one "tech" after another trying to convince you that what is clearly a hardware failure is caused by a virus. I swear to god, "it must be some kind of virus" is the ending to every single script those fuckers have. But if you give them a support code for a business system, you go from dialing the phone to having an RMA box shipped out in around ten minutes. (Motherboard died on that system, but it was within the warranty period, and that was by far the best interaction I've ever had with any kind of phone support.)

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:01AM (2 children)

      by Marand (1081) on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:01AM (#618951) Journal

      Intel's somewhat better compatibility with most things and lower temperatures make it the basically superior choice.

      I think you haven't been paying enough attention lately, the temperature thing's reversed with Intel and AMD's newest offerings. Intel's latest chips have been the ones running hot (look up Intel's TIM vs. solder issues, and the lengths people are going to to fix them), especially the ones they pushed out fast to combat Ryzen and Threadripper, while Ryzen chips (especially the non-X ones like the 1700 and 1600) are much cooler than AMD's failed *dozer era chips.

      Anecdotal example, but with air cooling and the stock cooler that came with it, My R7 1700 tends to run around 30C on normal load, and I haven't been able to get it to go over 60C, not even after hours of 100% cpu/thread utilisation. People are even OCing them up to nearly 4ghz on the stock cooler. Meanwhile, people with Intel chips are reporting abrupt jumps to 90C, reviews of newer chips indicate they need massive liquid cooling to OC reliably, and people are actually suggesting delidding the CPUs to fix the problems. Delidding a $1000+ CPU to fix thermal issues is insane.

      Currently, if you want a cooler chip, AMD's the way to go, not Intel.

      • (Score: 1) by Crash on Sunday January 07 2018, @07:19AM (1 child)

        by Crash (1335) on Sunday January 07 2018, @07:19AM (#619042)

        Indeed, overclocking a $1000+ CPU is insane. So if you've already tossed the warranty out the window, what's a little more insanity added to the fray.

        • (Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:47AM

          by Marand (1081) on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:47AM (#619070) Journal

          Overclocking is considered a feature of some chips, and Intel sells the OC-enabled ones at a premium specifically because of that. Expecting to be able to use a feature you paid for isn't "insane", though having to delid the CPU to do so well is.

          (For anyone curious, on the AMD side all the Ryzen CPUs are OCable, no premium attached, but you have to buy an appropriate motherboard. Mid-range and high-end boards support it but low-end ones have OC disabled.)

  • (Score: 2, Touché) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:07PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:07PM (#618901) Homepage

    Welcome to 1995, Nostradamus.