Performance hit for Intel systems on the way...

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Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Also affects older than scalable right ? So all the E5 line ? Desktop ?
 

K D

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Dec 24, 2016
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The article mentions all intel processors in the last decade.

How is it that none of the other major outlets have not reported this yet? Theregister.co.uk is not where I expect to see this type of news first.
 

woodshop2300

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Dec 17, 2016
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confirmed at phoronix with linux benchmark.

Initial Benchmarks Of The Performance Impact Resulting From Linux's x86 Security Changes - Phoronix

The pity thing is that apparently if the OS patch is applied, this patch also affects AMD rigs performance, although AMD CPU are not affected by the breach security that is supposed to be worked around by OS patch. Thus, AMD recommends to not apply patch...
Bad 2018 start for Intel.
Ewww so they are doing all that context switching regardless then..
bet that becomes a kernel option really quick on the linux side at least.
 

PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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...How is it that none of the other major outlets have not reported this yet?...
It being reported everywhere...except on any sites with official Intel NDA access...

Sent from my VS996 using Tapatalk
 
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vrod

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Jan 18, 2015
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How is it that none of the other major outlets have not reported this yet? Theregister.co.uk is not where I expect to see this type of news first.
Maybe intel is already paying off the medias to shut up? :D

I see a huge shitstorm incoming as well as a big help for AMD to get back on the server market.
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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I have a feeling this is going to be something where we see a rushed patch then performance improvement over time.

The harder bit is trying to sort out what we will do for benchmarking since I like to have comparable numbers. One option now is hope Ubuntu 18.04 has the patch and enough performance tuning, then re-run everything based on that LTS version.

Another side is that there are also three performance cases. One where this has little impact. One where this has an impact to performance but not in a manner that pushes you out of SLAs. A third where you are pushed outside of SLAs and need more hardware because of performance per machine is lower.
 
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pricklypunter

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Nov 10, 2015
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Argh...the ol' unintended consequences of what seemed like a good idea at the time...
I can totally see Intel giving away a lot of free stuff over the next year or two, like chips, warranties, employees and etc :p:D
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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so does that mean all of the 2011 v1, v2, v3, v4? what about my laptop with the latest i5 and i7 8th gen? or i guess now all my atom tablets and 2 in 1 will even be slower?:(
 

Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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Going to be really interesting to see how our big SfB, MSX, SQL, Oracle, etc systems look post patch, we certainly have some systems that we may need more hardware where performance is lower, eg MSX servers are really loaded with say 8000 mailboxes because that’s what it could run due to either cpu or storage performance. Also Oracle systems where your extracting the most value possible of the 2 x 4-core cpu’s by having lots of memory and I/O just using the whole CPU.
Not that we run SAP HANA on intel but I could imagine this is another area some may run into trouble.

Fun times ahead.
 

ecosse

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Jul 2, 2013
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Its going to be real interesting to see the results in the multi-tenant space. Say for instance I've built a virtualised SQL / Oracle farm and licensed the blade on cores with overcommitted. Now say that this patch means another blade is required. Cost models are going to change as a result of this. Feel happy for AMD!
 

Ozymand

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Oct 17, 2014
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Unfortunately for AMD, they're probably going to get thrown under the bus with Intel as most OS providers appear to take any x86-64 platform and consider it unsecure. AMD has been lobbying for Linux to put in an exception for them, but it has not been accepted.

As for Microsoft, I figure they're going to take the simple path and do the same. Which means the hit that Intel takes, AMD is going to take as well (and in some cases, it might be worse if they're optimizing towards Intel as the target platform).
 

wildpig1234

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Aug 22, 2016
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Unfortunately for AMD, they're probably going to get thrown under the bus with Intel as most OS providers appear to take any x86-64 platform and consider it unsecure. AMD has been lobbying for Linux to put in an exception for them, but it has not been accepted.

As for Microsoft, I figure they're going to take the simple path and do the same. Which means the hit that Intel takes, AMD is going to take as well (and in some cases, it might be worse if they're optimizing towards Intel as the target platform).
AMD says to not apply the patch to computers using their CPU. So for this time, they might get away with better performance if the patch is optionally not applied.

But future O/S vers that would have the patch built in if there is no exception to not apply the patch then they would be hit as well.
 

Patrick

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Dec 21, 2010
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I doubt it--the TLB hit is essential to the workaround, and is what it is.
Just as an example, OSX 10.13.2 was patched for KPTI in early December, 10.13.3 is going to have additional tweaks.
 

Ozymand

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AMD says to not apply the patch to computers using their CPU. So for this time, they might get away with better performance if the patch is optionally not applied.

But future O/S vers that would have the patch built in if there is no exception to not apply the patch then they would be hit as well.
From what I've seen you can command-line bypass the changes in Linux if you're using a AMD processor, I just don't know if Microsoft is going to be so amenable. We can probably dodge the initial patch (if truth be told, this coming Tuesday), but imagine at some point there will be some mandatory security roll-up that will also include this. It'll become a fun game of "dodge the patch" for those AMD systems if it is to be avoided.