From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sat Feb 3 16:20:07 2018 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2610:1c1:1:606c::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CA928ED8470 for ; Sat, 3 Feb 2018 16:20:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from news@mips.inka.de) Received: from mail.inka.de (quechua.inka.de [IPv6:2a04:c9c7:0:1073:217:a4ff:fe3b:e77c]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 6B09F70315 for ; Sat, 3 Feb 2018 16:20:07 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from news@mips.inka.de) Received: from mips.inka.de (news@[127.0.0.1]) by mail.inka.de with uucp (rmailwrap 0.5) id 1ei0Xu-0001E1-El; Sat, 03 Feb 2018 17:20:06 +0100 Received: from lorvorc.mips.inka.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by lorvorc.mips.inka.de (8.15.2/8.15.2) with ESMTP id w13GIUik003871 for ; Sat, 3 Feb 2018 17:18:30 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from news@lorvorc.mips.inka.de) Received: (from news@localhost) by lorvorc.mips.inka.de (8.15.2/8.15.2/Submit) id w13GIUbB003870 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Sat, 3 Feb 2018 17:18:30 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from news) To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: Christian Weisgerber Newsgroups: list.freebsd.questions Subject: Re: Response to Meltdown and Spectre Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2018 16:18:30 -0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <23154.11945.856955.523027@jerusalem.litteratus.org> <5A726B60.7040606@gmail.com> <92120E50-19A7-4A44-90DF-505243D77259@kreme.com> User-Agent: slrn/1.0.3 (FreeBSD) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.25 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2018 16:20:08 -0000 On 2018-02-01, "@lbutlr" wrote: > That seems highly unlikely. It will damage the role of Intel in > the server market fora time, but the trouble is that AMD's behavior > has been at least as bad as Intel's, if not worse, in regards to > Meltdown, so there's not a clearly better choice even though the > AMD chips have less issues. AMD's initial response appeared to have been written by a PR person who simply summarized the vulnerability information from the Spectre/Meltdown papers and deployed the usual head-in-the-sand position that there is no vulnerability until an exploit is demonstrated. AMD has always said that their x86 CPUs are not vulnerable to Meltdown and nobody is contradicting them on this. However, like everybody else implementing speculative executaion, they are vulnerable to Spectre variants 1 and 2. The initial response downplayed this dangerously, but they eventually admitted it. The best reaction came from ARM. They provided a COMPLETE list of all their CPUs that are affected, and they documented another vulnerability (Meltdown 3a, reading of supervisor registers from user mode) that had not even been considered in the original research papers. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de