uh,oh!!! Looks like windows will get 5-30 slower next patch tuesday. (2 Viewers)

Feb 27, 2011
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A fundamental design flaw in Intel's processor chips has forced a significant redesign of the Linux and Windows kernels to defang the chip-level security bug.

Programmers are scrambling to overhaul the open-source Linux kernel's virtual memory system. Meanwhile, Microsoft is expected to publicly introduce the necessary changes to its Windows operating system in an upcoming Patch Tuesday: these changes were seeded to beta testers running fast-ring Windows Insider builds in November and December.

Crucially, these updates to both Linux and Windows will incur a performance hit on Intel products. The effects are still being benchmarked, however we're looking at a ballpark figure of five to 30 per cent slow down, depending on the task and the processor model. More recent Intel chips have features – specifically, PCID – to reduce the performance hit.

Linux already patched.

Full story here.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/

Looks like I might be moving over to ryzen sooner than I expected :(
 

Minxy

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From reading that article it appears that AMD chips are okay ...

I love this bit though, whoever came up with that deserves a medal:

At one point, Forcefully Unmap Complete Kernel With Interrupt Trampolines, aka FUCKWIT, was mulled by the Linux kernel team, giving you an idea of how annoying this has been for the developers.

:LOL:

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Gromett
Feb 27, 2011
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From reading that article it appears that AMD chips are okay ...
Hence my quote about Ryzen :p

I love this bit though, whoever came up with that deserves a medal:

At one point, Forcefully Unmap Complete Kernel With Interrupt Trampolines, aka FUCKWIT, was mulled by the Linux kernel team, giving you an idea of how annoying this has been for the developers.

:LOL:
Yup, Linux is much more open about it's internal workings. You tend to see lots of humorous comments in the code...

Here are some comments I have seen in code I have worked on (from memory)

/*** DRUNK -- FIX LATER! ***/

/* No idea why this works, check back later */

/* who wrote this pile of crap, it is so dumb it is clever */

The last one was put in because the original author had done something extremely dumb but it actually worked as intended. Rather than fix it the new guy put this comment in...
 
Sep 17, 2017
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If this really does cause a double digit percentage slowdown on Intel hardware, there's going to be a lot of IT server upgrades happening very shortly!
 

RowleyBirkinQC

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I wonder if there will be much impact to major Cloud hosting vendors, presumably they may have enough redundancy/contingency to absorb?

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Sep 17, 2017
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I wonder if there will be much impact to major Cloud hosting vendors, presumably they may have enough redundancy/contingency to absorb?
The bigger you scale, the less spare you need. And I can't believe they'd have 20% redundant redundancy to account for things like this.
 
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Gromett
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AMD has had to patch linux to fix the intel patch :rofl::rofl::rofl:



Basically it removes setup_force_cpu_bug routine
Then adds a conditional so that it only gets applied if the CPU is not by AMD :clap2:

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Gromett
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what's the best free one to go with only ever used windows
bill
Moving from Windows to Linux won't help as it is an Intel CPU bug not an OS bug.
If you want to ensure you have no speed impact you would need to move to an AMD Ryzen CPU..

I was planning to make the move to a Ryzen CPU in 2019 but will be bringing this forward if I see much speed impact in my workloads.
 
Sep 24, 2013
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Presumably the same applies to Macs. Lets see how long Apple takes to respond.
 
Sep 17, 2017
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There are rumours that it's also affecting ARM (i.e. the processors in most phones and tablets), but I'm not sure if that's because they made the same balls-up as Intel, or because the patch automatically applies to all processors, even if they aren't vulnerable (hence AMD's fix-fix).

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Nov 18, 2011
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Moving from Windows to Linux won't help as it is an Intel CPU bug not an OS bug.
If you want to ensure you have no speed impact you would need to move to an AMD Ryzen CPU..

I was planning to make the move to a Ryzen CPU in 2019 but will be bringing this forward if I see much speed impact in my workloads.
are you typing in Russian haven't got any idea what all that means :Eeek:
bill
 

Vanman

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are you typing in Russian haven't got any idea what all that means :Eeek:
bill

That's what you get for reading the COMPUTING section ;)

I doubt that many Home Users will even notice the difference as core processor speed is rarely an issue. A couple of seconds to the boot up time is neither here nor there and 30% on things that happen as fast as you type is next to nowt.
 
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I was beginning to think that I was the only one on this forum who wasn't a computer whizz kid! I have no idea what 90% of the comments above refer to, but can work my iPad quite well so I suppose compared to my dad I must be a computing genius to him.......

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Not sure they actually announce security patches?

I don't think it's that they don't announce them. Their practice of making sure any new update is properly finished, debugged and tested before release mean patches and bug fixes are pretty rare things in OS X. The exact details of any update are always available for anyone who wants to look.

Anything important just happens in the background without disturbing you.

It's interesting that the article doesn't mention Apple at all. You would assume that a design flaw in the chips would apply across the board wouldn't you.

MacRumours thinks Apple will be affected as well: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/02/intel-chip-design-flaw/

They also go further and suggest it's not a new flaw and anything up to 10 years old with Intel chips will be affected. :Eeek:

I wouldn't be surprised if they've patched it already. I had a system update that needed a restart (3rd one of 2017 from memory :whistle:) a week or 10 days ago. If it needed to be at base OS level as suggested I wouldn't be at all surprised if they'd just added it to that. I've not noticed any drop in performance so far but I'll keep an eye on it.
 
Feb 13, 2013
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Always used AMD chips in home built desktops so shouldn't be a problem. Now laptops is a slightly different issue but they are so old replacements are in order anyway.

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Gromett
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I don't think it's that they don't announce them. Their practice of making sure any new update is properly finished, debugged and tested before release mean patches and bug fixes are pretty rare things in OS X. The exact details of any update are always available for anyone who wants to look.
THey are not rare, it's just apple doesn't publicly announce them.

Anything important just happens in the background without disturbing you.
Except critical things like kernel updates which require a reboot. Apple devices based in x686 will need to reboot to apply this patch,

It's interesting that the article doesn't mention Apple at all. You would assume that a design flaw in the chips would apply across the board wouldn't you.
Yes it does mention Apple;
Similar operating systems, such as Apple's 64-bit macOS, will also need to be updated


They also go further and suggest it's not a new flaw and anything up to 10 years old with Intel chips will be affected. :Eeek:
The article I quote stated this as well. It is a fundamental flaw in the x86 architecture.

I wouldn't be surprised if they've patched it already. I had a system update that needed a restart (3rd one of 2017 from memory :whistle:) a week or 10 days ago. If it needed to be at base OS level as suggested I wouldn't be at all surprised if they'd just added it to that. I've not noticed any drop in performance so far but I'll keep an eye on it.
It is possible apple have already patched, but apple operate a security through obscurity system like MS does so we never 100% know what is included in each patch etc. Linux is the only one where you can view the source and see what has been fixed in each patch and the dev notes on it.
 
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Gromett
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There are rumours that it's also affecting ARM (i.e. the processors in most phones and tablets), but I'm not sure if that's because they made the same balls-up as Intel, or because the patch automatically applies to all processors, even if they aren't vulnerable (hence AMD's fix-fix).

It doesn't affect ARM chips. Arm chips are fundamentally different from the x86 architecture.
 
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Gromett
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Gromett
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ok, I have spent quite a bit of time reading up on this to try and see how I am affected.
The kernel patch will fix the Meltdown issue, but Spectre is unlikely to see a fix without a new CPU I don't think or if it is fixed it won't be a complete fix.

So in the meantime I have updated my hosts lists to the latest version, cleared out my NOSCRIPT settings and now only temporarily allow most sites and only fully enable javascript for regularly visited sites like fun.

The reason for this is, the only way an external attacker can run ANY code on my computer is javascript from a web page. So I am being even more stringent on who I allow to do this.

For windows users, you will need to be excessively careful about what software you install and from where. I would recommend installing noscript.. It is a bit of a ballache at first but you get used to it, however the speedup and security it gives you is well worth it... If I get time later this week I will make a brief video explaining it and how to use it.

There is not much more we can do at the moment...
 
Apr 10, 2010
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THey are not rare, it's just apple doesn't publicly announce them.


Except critical things like kernel updates which require a reboot. Apple devices based in x686 will need to reboot to apply this patch,


Yes it does mention Apple;




The article I quote stated this as well. It is a fundamental flaw in the x86 architecture.


It is possible apple have already patched, but apple operate a security through obscurity system like MS does so we never 100% know what is included in each patch etc. Linux is the only one where you can view the source and see what has been fixed in each patch and the dev notes on it.
I've just read (following @Gromett 's link and onwards) that Apple has already patched OSX 10.13.2, the latest macOS High Sierra.
 
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Presumably the same applies to Macs. Lets see how long Apple takes to respond.
From The Register's summary of the Meltdown bug (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/intel_amd_arm_cpu_vulnerability/):
"It affects potentially all out-of-order execution Intel processorssince 1995, except Itanium and pre-2013 Atoms. It definitely affects out-of-order x86-64 Intel CPUs since 2011. There are workaround patches to kill off this vulnerability available now for Windows, and for Linux. Apple's macOS has been patched since version 10.13.2. Installing and enabling the latest updates for your OS should bring in the fixes."
 

Minxy

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@Gromett ... do you know of a way to find out the download size of these updates? I can't find an answer on Mr Google but thought my mate Mr Gromett might know! :D

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