Open-source champion Bruce Perens has called out Intel for adding a new restriction to its software license agreement along with its latest CPU security patches to prevent developers from publishing software benchmark results.
The new clause appears to be a move by Intel to legally gag developers from revealing performance degradation caused by its mitigations for Spectre and Foreshadow or 'L1 Terminal Fault' (L1FT) flaw speculative attacks.
"You will not, and will not allow any third party to ... publish or provide any software benchmark or comparison test results," Intel's new agreement states .
[...] Another section of the license blocking redistribution appears to have caused maintainers of Debian to withhold Intel's patch too , as reported by The Register.
[...] Updated 12:15pm ET, August 23 2018: An Intel spokesperson responded: "We are updating the license now to address this and will have a new version available soon. As an active member of the open-source community, we continue to welcome all feedback."
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday August 24 2018, @04:36AM (1 child)
I thought the microcode got loaded by BIOS (or EFI-BOOT) or by the kernel? [trundles off to check...] Yep, right there in kernel config. So just make your own kernel, or grab an older microcode and compile it into a newer kernel. May be easier said than done...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @02:11PM
it's what I did to restore performance to a machine that infrequently touches the internet except for the occasional update.
which of course reminded me to check the updates more thoroughly before applying them, after I was unhappy with the result.
I had to get the microcode file from an old backup; I'd never even paid attention to the microcode file as applied by the OS prior to that. This also was before the whole spectre thing. something in the management engine was goofing up my overclocks..