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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


Original Submission

Related Stories

Qualcomm Joins Others in Confirming its CPUs Suffer From Spectre, and Other Meltdown News 31 comments

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Qualcomm has confirmed its processors have the same security vulnerabilities disclosed this week in Intel, Arm and AMD CPU cores this week.

The California tech giant picked the favored Friday US West Coast afternoon "news dump" slot to admit at least some of its billions of Arm-compatible Snapdragon system-on-chips and newly released Centriq server-grade processors are subject to the Meltdown and/or Spectre data-theft bugs.

[...] Qualcomm declined to comment further on precisely which of the three CVE-listed vulnerabilities its chips were subject to, or give any details on which of its CPU models may be vulnerable. The paper describing the Spectre data-snooping attacks mentions that Qualcomm's CPUs are affected, while the Meltdown paper doesn't conclude either way.

[...] Apple, which too bases its iOS A-series processors on Arm's instruction set, said earlier this week that its mobile CPUs were vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown – patches are available or incoming for iOS. The iGiant's Intel-based Macs also need the latest macOS, version 10.13.2 or greater, to kill off Meltdown attacks.

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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.

      --
      La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
      • (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.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:34AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:34AM (#618713)

    What about Krzanich selling stock like crazy?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:50AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:50AM (#618716)

      Performance drop is situational, very dependent on workload. I don't know where you got the 50% figure from, but from what I heard, normal-person usage will see a fall in performance of a few percent, while some specific applications (mostly database and virtualization) could be hit by up to 30%, IIRC.

      The stock selling was not under control of the CEO, it's all automated and preplanned, and not unusual.

      (Your information sources seem to suck, I'd suggest finding some new ones.)

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:53AM (3 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday January 06 2018, @11:53AM (#618717) Journal

        It was "preplanned" after he learned of the bugs.

        https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/intel-ceos-sale-of-stock-just-before-security-bug-reveal-raises-questions/ [arstechnica.com]

        Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel, sold millions of dollars' worth of Intel stock—all he could part with under corporate bylaws—after Intel learned of Meltdown and Spectre, two related families of security flaws in Intel processors.

        While an Intel spokesperson told CBS Marketwatch reporter Jeremy Owens that the trades were "unrelated" to the security revelations, and Intel financial filings showed that the stock sales were previously scheduled, Krzanich scheduled those sales on October 30. That's a full five months after researchers informed Intel of the vulnerabilities. And Intel has offered no further explanation of why Krzanich abruptly sold off all the stock he was permitted to.

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        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:06PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:06PM (#618722)

          What made him wait 5 months, before coming to that decision?

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by choose another one on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:13PM (1 child)

          by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:13PM (#618726)

          It was "preplanned" after he learned of the bugs.

          _most_ of it was options which he exercised as soon as they vested and sold as soon as possible after that. Those options would have been set up long (years) before the bug was known, the dates on which they vested and could be sold were set then and were not in his control.

          The fact that he also offloaded other shares leaving him holding the minimum required by his contract is very very likely because he is going, and wants the money for whatever he is doing next. That is also likely to have been planned months if not years ago. It is very very common for senior people to leave when options vest or earn-out contracts complete, Jimmy Iovine (head of Apple music) is in the news today because he is doing exactly that, and it's a several-month plan, as these things usually are. I would be not be surprised at all if we hear soon that Krzanich is moving to pastures new, and it will inevitably look like it is a response to the bugs, however I would also be surprised if it was not actually planned months/years ago.

          • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday January 06 2018, @02:59PM

            by bzipitidoo (4388) on Saturday January 06 2018, @02:59PM (#618761) Journal

            Well, that was a glib and bloodless dodge of the fact that upper management in the US is hugely overpaid, and that if anyone has insider knowledge, it is them.

            However, it is correct to say that their pay has little to do with performance or problems such as these processor bugs. No matter the circumstances of their departure, they get a golden parachute.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @02:22PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @02:22PM (#618752)
      • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:45PM

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:45PM (#618783) Journal

        it's all automated and preplanned, and not unusual.

        Heh, so was the bug... I kid! I kid! But they could have sat on it for a very long time. These days it does pay to assume the worst.

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 2) by legont on Saturday January 06 2018, @06:42PM

      by legont (4179) on Saturday January 06 2018, @06:42PM (#618841)

      He will put up a fight, but it'd much easier for everybody to simply bankrupt and perhaps divide Intel. He knows it and everybody knows it.

      --
      "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
  • (Score: 1) by sonamchauhan on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:11PM (14 children)

    by sonamchauhan (6546) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:11PM (#618725)

    "This is very very different from FDIV,"

    Yes, the chips are soldered in now. We can't recall Microsoft Surfaces and Macbook Airs - think of the cost. So, the chips are basically working as designed. (Just like the FDIV CPUs were)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:44PM (#618732)

      The pay us for the lower quaility. Buying a new surface and get 80% of designed performance then give back that 20%.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @01:14PM (7 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @01:14PM (#618739)

      That's not why it's different. The current CPU's have servicable microcode, they can probably patch the chips in-field. I'm guessing they're going to disable all speculative execution across memory protection boundaries.

      And this sets a precedent of course. If Intel gets away with this, they will probably scale down their QA, since they can rely on their customers to do beta-testing for them, like Google and Microsoft are already doing.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:50PM

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:50PM (#618787) Journal

        servicable microcode

        You misspelled 'vulnerable'. Now we can do to CPUs what we've been doing to BIOS for years. Bad dog!

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:18PM (1 child)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:18PM (#618803)

        If Intel gets away with this, they will probably scale down their QA, since they can rely on their customers to do beta-testing for them, like Google and Microsoft are already doing.

        Microsoft is absolutely right to eliminate QA and let their customers do their beta testing. Why should they pay QA people to do this work when customers can do it instead? If the customers didn't like it, they could vote with their feet, but they haven't: they've shown over and over that they will take whatever software Microsoft gives them, no matter how buggy or inconvenient (e.g. forced updates), so exactly what incentive does MS have to make things easier for these customers?

        Intel may or may not be able to work this way: it's possible customers could start demanding AMD CPUs in their computers instead. But I kinda doubt it.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @12:50AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @12:50AM (#618948)

          What's more, as loud as feminists are about the problems in recent Windows OSes, we never see them use their numbers to move away from Microsoft en masse. Microsoft can be funding sex trafficking, and we still don't see the high priestesses of feminism handing down fatwas against Microsoft.

          Newspapers report about things as though nobody besides Microsoft has operating systems and office software available and ready to use (except those Apple bros), further encouraging Microsoft to not give a fuck. Feminists instead lash out at people who already hate Microsoft, further encouraging Microsoft to not give a fuck. Why should Microsoft (and Intel) bother with quality when anybody who could hold them accountable bigtime is too busy tilting at windmills and saying that free software is something only for failed men?

          To reiterate your point: entrenched companies like Microsoft and Intel can do whatever the crap they want, because there are no consequences for them.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by choose another one on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:47PM (1 child)

        by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:47PM (#618819)

        That's not why it's different either. The two bugs have totally different impact.

        FDIV meant some FP ops gave actual wrong results, for some operands. I was in research at the time, a lot of people had to redo a lot of work (I didn't - I used my own machine and had bought AMD!), only a fraction (maybe one in ten of those that I knew) found actual errors caused by FDIV, but that is enough that all possibly-affected work had to be rechecked. Meanwhile the affected machines were paperweights - you couldn't trust them to do any FP work. On the other hand if you could do your stuff with all integer math, access to lab PCs suddenly became a lot easier... Sure, Intel coughed up replacement processors, eventually, but so far as I know it never compensated anyone who had to redo work. Most people would never notice FDIV impact, but the sci/eng research community (and presumably commercial also) were up in arms because if you were doing any extensive FP you were affected, even if only by the lack of trust in results. At that time the sci/eng community probably bought a significant % of new pentiums, to do FP.

        Meltdown is different - no code has given incorrect results. Except (and arguably, because the result would be the intention of the author) for test programs and live malware, which _might_ exist but doesn't seem to have shown up so far. So, no impact on work done except some systems might have been compromised, so you'd need to check/audit as with any security hole release. Most OSes/hypervisors are patched now, so no impact going forward other than a not-yet-quantified performance impact.

        The performance impact going forward is not yet known, but estimates vary from 5% to 30% and it's workload dependent - big IO DBs and WM hosts being worst. It is also apparently dependent on whether your Intel CPUs have newer PCID instructions or not, which came out in 2008,2010 maybe? So, most people again won't be affected, those that will be badly affected will be VM host admins and DBAs running heavy IO/VM workloads on pre-2010 hardware, now I may be speculating here but I don't think that is a large community...

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @04:24AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @04:24AM (#619004)

          I remember FDIV - these bugs are worse.

          If even 25% of the world's computer users don't patch, and 3% of these are successfully targeted by hackers who steal online banking credentials, that's tens of millions of bank accounts compromised. Can you imagine the social and economic disruption?

          By comparison, FDIV was harmless -- computers were not as widely used. A few analysts and researchers lost time, but eventually got the option to pop the hood and swap the errant CPU.

          Maybe there'll be another cash for computing clunkers deal. :)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @04:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @04:12AM (#619003)

        From what I read, microcode won't help.

        User-updatable microcode has been around a long time -- almost two decades for Intel CPUs if I recall correctly. But not everything is fixable by microcode. Microcode can't rewire a chip, nor add functionality that isn't there. A CPU isn't an FPGA.

        But I could be wrong -- Intel claim the performance impact of the patches will decrease as time progresses. Maybe this means they have some microcode magic planned that will synergize with newer software patches and reduce some of the performance hit.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:04PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:04PM (#619206)
        If you can fix it with just the microcode then there's no need for Microsoft, Apple, etc to change the code of their OS.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:37PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:37PM (#618780)

      FDIV was 1 line of chips. This is probably 50 lines of CPUs pretty much the ones with FDIV and up.

      The scope is pretty much everything they have shipped since 1997.

      I could see them *maybe* recalling this years and last years but that would be it. At the very least get the ones that in the pipe at the manufacture that have not been soldered down yet and are still in the trays.

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:19PM (3 children)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:19PM (#618804)

        Why should they recall anything at all? You can just use a software workaround to avoid the problem. It might cause your system to run half as fast, but that's OK. What are you going to do about it, switch to AMD?

        • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @05:00PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @05:00PM (#618821)

          Intel has a reputation for manufacturing half fast CPUs?

          • (Score: 3, Funny) by redneckmother on Saturday January 06 2018, @07:27PM

            by redneckmother (3597) on Saturday January 06 2018, @07:27PM (#618854)

            Intel has a reputation for manufacturing half fast CPUs?

            Only if you "say" it really fast.

            --
            Mas cerveza por favor.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:33AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:33AM (#619023)

          When things start to go sideways in PR land. Watch my prediction come true.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:37PM (3 children)

    by looorg (578) on Saturday January 06 2018, @12:37PM (#618730)

    There have been a couple of different stories about whom discovered the bug and when. Whichever is true they have known about it for some time, potentially over a year. During that time they have kept cranking out CPU:s and sold them at full price. I'm kind of interested to keep track of CPU-sales over a coming period of time and see if the price per unit of INTEL CPU:s is going to take a dive or not. It might be hard to sell them at full price if they are "defective" even if it can be patched out -- but patched out at a performance hit. I wonder if AMD CPU sales will sore.

    Even if they did a total recall I doubt most people would even bother, if they remove the CPU from their computer they need a replacement right away to put in -- and it has to be the right brand (ie Intel) or they also have to replace the motherboard ... and if they replace that there might be other things to replace so if they take part in the recall they might as well just get a new computer. Even as a class action lawsuit I doubt most of us would get more then a $5-voucher for our next CPU purchase. While some lawyers get superduper-Intel-rich.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday January 06 2018, @07:32PM (2 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday January 06 2018, @07:32PM (#618857) Journal

      AMD seemed to have grabbed some desktop market share but not that much. Ryzen mobile chips, a segment where they do well because of budget laptops, were delayed a pretty long time.

      AMD should be releasing a 12nm refresh of Ryzen desktop chips around March. Maybe a 10% performance improvement.

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      • (Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday January 07 2018, @12:58AM (1 child)

        by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 07 2018, @12:58AM (#618950)

        Going to upgrade to Zen 2 when they come out. Like, day 1 with overnight shipping : )

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        • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:33AM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:33AM (#618977) Journal

          Zen 2 is 7nm, expected 2019, Zen+ is the 12nm.

          By then there should be no Spectre in AMD, and no whatsit in Intel. Let's hope.

          AMD more than delivered on Zen 1 IPC. Promised a 40% increase, delivered something like 52%. They have said that the initial Ryzen was a "worst case scenario" due to it being a new architecture on a new process. I don't think I've seen any particular estimates on the IPC increase between Zen 1 and Zen 2, but it should be interesting. They might also increase core counts.

          Zen 3 is on the roadmap.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:43AM (1 child)

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 07 2018, @01:43AM (#618962)

    I think somebody inside of Intel needs to really take a long hard look
    at their CPU's, and actually admit that they have issues instead of
    writing PR blurbs that say that everything works as designed.

    .. and that really means that all these mitigation patches should be
    written with "not all CPU's are crap" in mind.

    Or is Intel basically saying "we are committed to selling you shit
    forever and ever, and never fixing anything"?

    https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/1/3/797 [lkml.org]

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    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @06:05AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @06:05AM (#619030)

      Matt Dillon in http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/2018-January/313758.html [dragonflybsd.org]

      I should note that we kernel programmers have spent decades trying to
      reduce system call overheads, so to be sure, we are all pretty pissed off
      at Intel right now. Intel's press releases have also been HIGHLY
      DECEPTIVE. In particular, they are starting to talk up 'microcode
      updates', but those are mitigations for the Spectre bug, not for the
      Meltdown bug. Spectre is another bug, far more difficult to exploit than
      Meltdown, which leaks information from other processes or the kernel based
      on those other processes or kernel doing speculative reads and executions
      which are partially managed by the originating user process. Spectre does
      NOT involve a protection domain violation like Meltdown, so the Meltdown
      mitigation cannot mitigate Spectre.

      These bugs (both Meltdown and Spectre) really have to be fixed in the CPUs
      themselves. Meltdown is the 1000 pound gorilla. I won't be buying any new
      Intel chips that require the mitigation. I'm really pissed off at Intel.

      He found some other bugs in CPUs ~10 years ago. http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070630105416 [undeadly.org]

      Or OpenBSD's Guenther https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=151521435721902&w=2 [marc.info]

      Personally, I do find it....amusing? that public announcements
      were moved up after the issue was deduced from development discussions and
      commits to a different open source OS project. Aren't we all glad that
      this was under embargo and strongly believe in the future value of
      embargoes?

      It seems the big boys mostly forgot BSDs, and they found out from the "cryptic" commits. All while PR dep was smearing the issue around for everyone.

      I'm glad we still have some FOSS peoples that don't follow party lines.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by SanityCheck on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:49AM

    by SanityCheck (5190) on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:49AM (#618982)

    I got two Intel chips here, my wife has probably 3, if I can get even a $10 settlement per chip I'll sign whatever paperwork is required for the lawyers to skin Intel alive.

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