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Amid the ongoing Meltdown fiasco, Intel has only one way to go in the data center... down. Intel may be forced to offer discounts or rebates to prevent customers from eventually moving to AMD x86 chips (such as Epyc) or even ARM chips:
Intel chips back 98% of data center operations, according to industry consultancy IDC. [...] Microsoft said on Tuesday the patches necessary to secure the threats could have a significant performance impact on servers.
[...] For Gleb Budman's company, San Mateo-based online storage firm Backblaze, building with ARM chips would not be difficult. "If ARM provides enough computing power at lower cost or lower power than x86, it would be a strong incentive for us to switch," said Budman. "If the fix for x86 results in a dramatically decreased level of performance, that might increasingly push in favor of switching to ARM."
Infinitely Virtual, a Los Angeles-based cloud computing vendor, is counting on Intel to replace equipment or offer a rebate to make up for the loss in computing power, Chief Executive Adam Stern said in an interview. "If Intel doesn't step up and do something to make this right then we're going to have to punish them in the marketplace by not purchasing their products," said Stern, whose company relies exclusively on Intel processors.
[...] Both Qualcomm and Cavium are developing ARM chips aimed at data centers. Cavium said it aimed to rival the performance of Intel chips for applications like databases and the content-delivery networks that help speed things like how fast online videos load.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @07:25AM (3 children)
Intel will just fix the problems at a hardware level, and then take a loss on promoting itself through "artificially" cheap chips.
This noise about switching is the same as Barcelona's noise about switching to FOSS; like Munich, it's all just an attempt to make an established supplier reduce prices.
People want x86 anyway. It's the only thing that works.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @07:38AM
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(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @08:30AM
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Friday January 12 2018, @12:21PM
except Munich actually migrated and saved money by switching to linux, even if the newer administration played the usual political tactic of destroying whatever the previous one was doing outside the real agenda. even if only because Microsoft has to make a good offer.
Account abandoned.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @09:21AM
Intel will just fix the problems at a hardware level in the next production, and then take a loss on promoting itself through "artificially" cheap chips.
This noise about switching is the same as Barcelona's noise about switching to FOSS; like Munich, it's all just an attempt to make an established supplier reduce prices.
People want x86, anyway. It's the only thing that works.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @12:50PM (1 child)
Isn't this the kind of story that could be automatically added to the SN story queue in a year? Then we could discuss how effective Intel was at regrouping after this setback.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 12 2018, @05:05PM
I don't think eds want non-subs ("go look for this story") to suddenly appear in the sub queue 6-12 months later. I might be wrong.
Interested parties could write a note to themselves to submit it. Or we could rely on a news site to do the Meltdown 1 Year in Review story and just... notice it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 12 2018, @02:00PM
Even if AMD and ARM are vulnerable to similar threats, exploits will likely require development effort and customization to work on the different hardware.
Running a massive datacenter on homogeneous hardware does make configuration and servicing easier, but it also gives an attacker a single target - one hit with a virus and your whole center can go down.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @02:01PM (3 children)
Intel's best hope is to put out a chip that works better than others.
This may just take fixing this bug in their current part?
Then price it so that if you are upset with them and buy somebody else's to punish them you also punish yourself.
Given a short term gain, folks will forget that Intel is not long term nice, and take the gain.
For this to be more that a speed bump, somebody else has to meet them in speed on the next chip.
Is anybody ready to do that?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 12 2018, @04:37PM (2 children)
Is it at all fixable by rewriting the CPU's microcode? Which would presumably be carried out using the Management Engine? In which case, is everyone that has disabled their Management Engine out in the cold?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday January 12 2018, @08:24PM
Proposed Conspiracy Theory: Maybe that's the point. The vuln was intentionally baked into the chips such that either you give the NSA and god knows how many foreign govts and corps complete access to all your data via the mgmt engine OR you have a wide open flaw such that every skript kiddie on the planet has full access to all your data. Either way, "they" win. This is such a great and devious plan that even if its not implemented today, the plan should be remembered because someone will surely implement it sooner or later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 12 2018, @11:43PM
Microcode can be loaded with dumb ME, as in home computer that probably has ME but doesn't really expose it. Maybe it's even missing or at least only local functions exist, saving the OEM some license money.
Anyway, Intel is not offereing microcode updates for all the CPUs, only last ones, and they don't seem to be full fixes, all OSes still need to help with the workarounds.
(Score: 1) by ElizabethGreene on Friday January 12 2018, @05:59PM (1 child)
I've been thoroughly unimpressed with AMD's response to the Spectre vulnerability. It took them until yesterday to publish anything other than a PR blurb as their "security advisory".
https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/speculative-execution [amd.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday January 12 2018, @06:34PM
That seems like a well reasoned response to the problem. They aren't trying to spin it as someone else's problem. It's even a slight explanation as to why the MS patches crashed a few machines (without mentioning MS).
Additionally, Spectre hasn't been currently shown to break hardware protections, unlike Meltdown, and is thus much less serious.
Given that Intel's first response was to try to confuse everyone, and then to lie about things, well, this is a superior response even if it wasn't quite as quick.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.