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It seems Intel has had some second thoughts about Spectre 2 microcode fixes:
Intel has issued new a new "microcode revision guidance" that confesses it won't address the Meltdown and Spectre design flaws in all of its vulnerable processors – in some cases because it's too tricky to remove the Spectre v2 class of vulnerabilities.
The new guidance (pdf), issued April 2, adds a "stopped" status to Intel's "production status" category in its array of available Meltdown and Spectre security updates. "Stopped" indicates there will be no microcode patch to kill off Meltdown and Spectre.
The guidance explains that a chipset earns "stopped" status because, "after a comprehensive investigation of the microarchitectures and microcode capabilities for these products, Intel has determined to not release microcode updates for these products for one or more reasons."
Those reasons are given as:
- Micro-architectural characteristics that preclude a practical implementation of features mitigating [Spectre] Variant 2 (CVE-2017-5715)
- Limited Commercially Available System Software support
- Based on customer inputs, most of these products are implemented as "closed systems" and therefore are expected to have a lower likelihood of exposure to these vulnerabilities.
Thus, if a chip family falls under one of those categories – such as Intel can't easily fix Spectre v2 in the design, or customers don't think the hardware will be exploited – it gets a "stopped" sticker. To leverage the vulnerabilities, malware needs to be running on a system, so if the computer is totally closed off from the outside world, administrators may feel it's not worth the hassle applying messy microcode, operating system, or application updates.
"Stopped" CPUs that won't therefore get a fix are in the Bloomfield, Bloomfield Xeon, Clarksfield, Gulftown, Harpertown Xeon C0 and E0, Jasper Forest, Penryn/QC, SoFIA 3GR, Wolfdale, Wolfdale Xeon, Yorkfield, and Yorkfield Xeon families. The list includes various Xeons, Core CPUs, Pentiums, Celerons, and Atoms – just about everything Intel makes.
Most [of] the CPUs listed above are oldies that went on sale between 2007 and 2011, so it is likely few remain in normal use.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Wednesday April 04 2018, @04:09PM (2 children)
Though we undoubtedly agree on the underlying facts, I respectfully disagree with your conclusion. CPUs haven't reached their maximum complexity--nowhere close--and we are at a stone-age level of transistor density compared to what's coming. Single cores will, at some point, be mind-bogglingly orders of magnitude faster than what we currently have.
I know that the Cyberdine systems processor for the Terminator, the Starfleet bio-neural gel packs, and 2001's HAL are still science fiction, but they're all pretty plausible and yesterday's science fiction in many areas is today's science fact.
Just because CPU complexity seems to have plateaued with the conditions of current design and manufacturing methods doesn't make the plateau a principle that applies to the future of computing. Making genuine advances that leap ahead of current designs is hard and expensive, whereas making clever recombinations of existing tech is less so; therefore, we do more of the latter than the former (and end up with spectre and meltdown). But the genuine advances that leap ahead are coming, barring the end of civilization through some unforseen means.
Maybe we'll use optical communications on-die to eliminate heat loss and allow us to go from 3GHz to 30GHz or 300GHz with the same power draw. Maybe unmapped properties of as yet untried materials will be found to have the side effect of moving electrons with a tenth the effort that we now have to undertake. Maybe Fairies will sprinkle magic dust on our Fabs. I don't know what the advance will be. But I know it's coming, and I am not writing off higher transistor density, and I am not writing off greater CPU complexity just because today's best engineers don't know the path to make them effective.
Though many people have mistakenly thought so all throughout the past, today is not as good as it's ever going to get (even if it's the best it's ever been) whether we are talking about chip designs, or steam engines, or tools, or the wheel, or fire.
Progress has been, and will continue to be, making things better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 04 2018, @04:34PM
To be pedantic, those might be evolving past our current notion of a CPU, in which case poster above would be correct
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @09:08AM
Technologically there's a long way to go.
We don't have an AI as smart as a crow with a brain the size of walnut and a relatively low power consumption.
Even some insects may still be smarter than our AIs in many ways: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/intelligence-test-shows-bees-can-learn-to-solve-tasks-from-other-bees [pbs.org]
Most quadcopters and UAVs can't fly as long without refuelling/recharging as most flies. There are other insects which do even better - monarch butterfly (44 hours nonstop flapping, 1000+ hours if gliding allowed: https://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/monarch/FlightPoweredEnergyQ.html [learner.org] ) or a dragonfly (Pantala flavescens).