# Main > Technical Support and Notices >  FAO Intel users

## Straf

Processor design flaw may make Intel processor based systems vulnerable to exploitation.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/0...u_design_flaw/

----------


## Mouse

Ok, that's it.

I've fought the 50% slow down the Win 10 Creator's Update caused my particular system by installing Linux.  

If Linux is going to end up being almost as slow, I might as well just be a spectator/occasional helper from now on.

----------


## ChickPea

Well, let's wait and see. It may not be as bad as it's being hyped. These things often aren't. And Intel will be working hard to release a fix.

There's a very detailed article on Ars Technica about it, if anyone's interested.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018...erous-patches/

----------


## Azélor

I plan to get an AMD cpu for my next machine. But this haz nothing to do with it.

I ll need to read more on this. 
When they say Intel, is it all the cpu or just some of them?

----------


## Falconius

I got a Ryzen. With the current gen, the Intel chips just end up being so much more expensive for equivalent Ryzen chips in the Ryzen line.  That said the processor speeds were super tempting, a 5% to 30% speed hit (I can't imagine it being that high) is a pretty big deal since the speed is the major selling point.

----------


## ChickPea

I've had my eye on a Ryzen for when I next upgrade (not sure when that'll be, though). They seem to have excellent performance for the price, in comparison to Intel. My PC is four years old now, but I bought a pricey i7 last upgrade (bought it through my work, and got something off it) and it's still feels pretty snappy, so I'm not rushing to upgrade yet... though if I experience a big slow down, maybe?

----------


## J.Edward

I had to look up Rizen, as I am so woefully out of date on pc build info. 
Which lead me to look up when my last build was [3 years or so].
Which then leads to the question, how frequently do most people upgrade a computer?
I seem to not do it any more frequently then about 5-6 years, due to the cost.

----------


## Straf

There was a time when I'd rebuild every 3 or 4 years, with the odd upgrade in between. These days maybe every 5 and even then only to about the lower to middle of mid-range specs although I always go for as much RAM as I can. I used to always say "I'll never fill that." whenever I bought a new hard drive as a joke but I don't think I've ever fully filled a 500GB one save for that one time there was an error in my system that filled my logfile in about 10 minutes. Saying that I usually run several drives in the same system. I have only ever used AMD CPUs in my self-builds, simply because the motherboards tended to be a little cheaper for some reason.

I'm not a power user or a high end gamer so I don't really need the latest tera-peta floppity bongohertz per chicken processor and a 40 dozen trillion eggshell polygon shaders per almond graphics card.

----------


## Mouse

Well there's my problem.  The fact that this machine is only 3 years old is a consequence of timing.  

I only ever bothered upgrading every 10 years or so before this one, and was hoping to get at least anther 5 out of this laptop before I needed to get something else.

The sheer speed at which problems evolve these days is passing me by.  I just can't afford to upgrade that fast.

No problem.  I'll go back to canvas and paint, and the same kind of people who are currently making it impossible for the _really_ little 'guy' like me to carry on with digital art the way I have been in the past, will just have to buy my extortionately priced framed prints if they want to see into my dreams after that  :Razz:

----------


## Straf

I shouldn't worry too much Mouse. The processes used to 'predict' and therefore speed up which machine instructions will be used next are used by many processors. AMD's just haven't been exploited yet. Software will have to 'downgrape' to compensate.

----------


## Mouse

Do you have any idea - a guestimate, perhaps, of how long it will take for the boffins to sort it all out?

I read the link you gave, and I read ChickPea's link as well.  I am (for better or worse) an artist.  I think in colours, shapes and patterns.  I find reading all that technical stuff really difficult to take in and understand the meaning.  I can draw a really complicated tessellation for you without breaking a sweat, but I don't understand the implications of all this technical stuff at all.

----------


## ChickPea

Seems there's two exploits and AMD isn't completely in the clear either, as the second affects all current chips. Here's a NY Times article that isn't too technical. There's patches coming out already though, and the first exploit seems more likely to affect cloud computing operators, rather than home users. As for re-engineering entire computer chipsets, gulp......!!

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/0...JhdWSzln?amp=1

----------


## waldronate

Every CPU ever built has had errata (errors in implementation) and the impact of those errors has varied widely (everybody remembers the famous Pentium divide error and the complete collapse of civilization that it caused, right?). As the NY Times article above points out, these particular errors are most likely to be of interest to large-scale operators because of how they share physical hardware among customers. The threat to the common user is minimal. An Ars Technica article from earlier today points out that ARM processors (like the one in your phone) are likely also vulnerable, because patches for that problem are being produced for them. It will likely take much longer for the phone patches to make it out into the wild than for any Windows or Linux patch due to how vendors don't update their phones.

The other software errors in your system are far more likely to cause problems than any particular processor problem.

----------


## Falconius

The Pentium floating point bug was the end of the world!  Lucky someone just hit the restart button and nothing happened.  That didn't stop the world form ending with the Y2K bug though.  Woe is us.

----------


## Mark Oliva

Today's news reports say that AMD processors also are affected.

----------


## Mouse

This is a quote directly from the New York Times article that ChickPea linked to above:




> "The Meltdown flaw is specific to Intel, but Spectre is a flaw in design that has been used by many processor manufacturers for decades. It affects virtually all microprocessors on the market, including chips made by AMD that share Intel’s design and the many chips based on designs from ARM in Britain."


_Quoted from "Researchers Discover Two Major Flaws in the World’s Computers", Written by Cade Metz and Nicole Perlroth, in the New York Times, 3 January 2018_

Though I'm not great at interpreting technical jargon, there do appear to be two flaws involved, as ChickPea already noted above, and one of them affects many different chips, not just Intel, as I assume "...the many chips based on designs from ARM..." will also include several other makes of chip as well as ARM chips.

----------


## egdcltd

ARM chips are in almost every mobile device on the planet, not to mention being present in a whole host of other electronic devices.

----------


## Redrobes

It seems to me from reading a few docs that intel chips are the most at risk and AMD and ARM are less so with some of the attacks not working on them and some of the attacks require a non standard build settings of the kernel so thats unlikely. So all in all its kinda yeah this could be a bit of an issue but im not convinced at this stage that its catastrophic. You still need to run a user program on the local machine to try the attack and on some of the attacks you need very specific knowledge of the processes running.

Compared to the impending devastation of the intel ME when that gets fully decoded these issues will look like small potatoes.

----------


## Mouse

Just an update from BBC News.

----------

