From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sun Feb 4 16:26:33 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 82C39EDE86D for ; Sun, 4 Feb 2018 16:26:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from pathiaki2@yahoo.com) Received: from sonic304-11.consmr.mail.bf2.yahoo.com (sonic304-11.consmr.mail.bf2.yahoo.com [74.6.128.34]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 28ABC86AEA for ; Sun, 4 Feb 2018 16:26:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from pathiaki2@yahoo.com) X-YMail-OSG: dvH3oIgVM1mzXz_PDm0_wpOOwl3kgMTV3id13.GvmRLrXFv1ovmfjpBh32Twc7y .6oq__AXSv6Yl_XLzD0iaVVo6yWtD25Mhe31GaH9C_hxBbCQOA0MozzbFrTKROT4yiFHkRXRFXQN wGYofm6yQfcY1RJQAvivXP_kWy6ejoSZOH00TRpfv3o05Lh5b_fqcJ1HcvlXVJdeus4.EAbD0CZ0 GVnejoBlP0RPVmD.odcIaxNvSgGYS6gyQDH3NCSiUgRb7dv0_wi8IONV9AKwU2PJJXhWjWezYQTk jsO82Yyi9GIB6dho4WYSP_YEjLOSxoEurbkqPf5RjCle5qm41CYiqtbXEUKFjiAtRgzpahZ_CA0s rjtOUpN5qRdOkk5W8QW0AMbc.fSGbHEkFe7LmS2gM6yZfOyWbJeBEaAgSMln9SD85wEzIktNmNjc c6lHJmzNY5lH3mFi0KPFUpsxHKXVta_4mW_82qy0DJPNFXxPhr5ut0amfQqVe64LSxzXS1oFA_5s lOcBY7_XHba6Wk2q_LPTuUdaMrFQgc2pm_fWNU33wVlg6Rt02JgrikSWPgrxGG9bOgbvjYaW937Q - Received: from sonic.gate.mail.ne1.yahoo.com by sonic304.consmr.mail.bf2.yahoo.com with HTTP; Sun, 4 Feb 2018 16:26:32 +0000 Received: from smtp106.rhel.mail.bf1.yahoo.com (EHLO [192.168.0.201]) ([98.139.231.40]) by smtp401.mail.bf1.yahoo.com (JAMES SMTP Server ) with ESMTPA ID c4b1309fe51e569217238d758f77aff7 for ; Sun, 04 Feb 2018 16:16:24 +0000 (UTC) Subject: Re: Response to Meltdown and Spectre To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <23154.11945.856955.523027@jerusalem.litteratus.org> <5A726B60.7040606@gmail.com> <92120E50-19A7-4A44-90DF-505243D77259@kreme.com> <044e62f7-69ca-71fe-34a8-5c5cafc06f08@yahoo.com> <0520dd84-c00c-fbf2-da1c-f6ff4c63739d@yahoo.com> <20180203224612.GA10517@milliways.localdomain> <51178.108.68.160.114.1517699531.squirrel@cosmo.uchicago.edu> <04967319-e627-9efa-2049-e35f8e1a42ba@yahoo.com> From: Paul Pathiakis Message-ID: <0e9580af-e1a5-f6d0-97d9-1fcab1751868@yahoo.com> Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2018 11:16:22 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.6.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <04967319-e627-9efa-2049-e35f8e1a42ba@yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Language: en-US X-Antivirus: AVG (VPS 180204-8, 02/04/2018), Outbound message X-Antivirus-Status: Clean 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: Sun, 04 Feb 2018 16:26:33 -0000 https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/speculative-execution This is the issue at hand regarding AMD chips. Meltdown - Not susceptible Specter variant 1 - It looks like nothing from recent production.  They state early Athlon/Opteron processors (year 2000 or so)  OS patches can correct the issue.  (FreeBSD has always had a much more robust memory management system than Linux and Windows including what some of call protected memory and a 'virtual fence' on the memory of the kernel. Specter variant 2 - Possibly susceptible.  Everything is being examined and, again, OS patches can resolve the issue.  However, in both variants they are working on firmware to correct 'POSSIBLE' issues. This has been the ongoing information coming out of AMD.  What I'm more interested in is the 'performance hit' after all the firmware updates come out.  This could be something similar to the use of IIS versus Apache.  IIS showed how 'fast' it was in benchmarks against Apache.  However, once it was delved into, it turned out that IIS was not doing proper checking on the content..... it was actually doing very little which made it significantly faster, but more susceptible to exploit.  So, once we get all the firmware patches, does it turn out that if Intel had been doing things correctly in their design does it slow their chips down by 20%?  If so, given their performance would drop below most high-end AMD chips that, effectively, already cost 1/2 of the performance, I'm dying to see what market share looks like after the mid-point of this year. P. On 2/4/2018 10:36 AM, Paul Pathiakis via freebsd-questions wrote: > > > On 02/03/2018 20:00, Christian Weisgerber wrote: >> On 2018-02-03, "Valeri Galtsev" wrote: >> >>> With all due respect, one person saying, it didn't affect me, doesn't >>> prove it is not disastrous for somebody else. Even if it is one machine >>> out of thousand that is "bricked" for some time, it is a disaster for >>> sysadmin who has that machine as a production server >> Of course, but who at all is saying that Intel's microcode updates >> have "bricked" any machines?  This appears to be an entirely spurious >> claim, based on nothing other than grievous exaggeration that turns >> "higher system reboots" into "bricked". You guys are talking each >> other into a frenzy of fear over nothing. >> > I would say we are not panicking in any manner.  Nor are we in a > frenzy.  Real sysadmins are cautious on everything/anything that can > affect the availability of the machines.  Any machine that is > 'unreliable' is 'bricked' or 'near-bricked' to us.  It causes a major > question about availability of the machine.  If Intel's patch hadn't > immediately caused issues, it may have caused something that might not > have been caught after it was rolled out to farms (aka 1000s) of > machine.   What then? > > There was a similar issue in the UK (I have since forgotten the name > of the data center owner) about 8 (or more) years regarding fujitsu > hard drives.  The data center was doing an excellent job of tracking > hard drive replacement every five years.  Fujitsu gave a great bid and > shipped the drives..... After less than 6 months, the drives started > to fail.  All the drives needed to be replaced after they had just > replaced all the drives a few months previous.  The company almost > went under. > > It's that simple in the world of a sysadmins in charge of a large > number of systems. > > Had that patch been rolled out to thousands and failed months later..... > > P. > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to > "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" --- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. http://www.avg.com