News Intel CPUs Suffer Performance Hit From New Spectre-v2 Mitigations

[Admin]

Linux media outlet Phoronix tested Alder Lake and Tiger Lake CPUs with the new Spectre Branch History Injection (BHI) mitigations.

Intel CPUs Suffer Performance Hit From New Spectre-v2 Mitigations : Read more

 

[hotaru251]

ROFL
up to 35%?
at that much lost wouldnt that put it back to 11th gen performance?

 

[TerryLaze]

ROFL
up to 35%?
at that much lost wouldnt that put it back to 11th gen performance?

Only that the 11th gen is also going to be up-to™ ~35% slower, in fact the article says down to haswell.

Also:
"Phoronix noted that AMD processors aren't safe from BHI even though modern Zen chips already leverage Retpolines. The problem is that AMD's LFENCE/JMP-based implementation of Retpolines isn't good enough to fend off BHI, so the chipmaker is shifting to general Retpolines. The impact of the transition for AMD processors is unknown, but Phoronix is already conducting new tests to find out. "

 

[digitalgriffin]

Does this mean we can ask for 35% of our money back since we bought it for a certain performance tier?

Installing intentional security flaws could be a great excuse to downgrade your processor over time. "So sorry we have to downgrade your processor to last gen's speeds to avoid this security issue. But if you want the latest and greatest plus fastest, you can fork over $700 for a next gen processor with a 2% speed improvement over the pre-fix processor you have."

Sooner or later there will be another class action lawsuit for designing defective products.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Only that the 11th gen is also going to be up-to™ ~35% slower, in fact the article says down to haswell.

Also:
"Phoronix noted that AMD processors aren't safe from BHI even though modern Zen chips already leverage Retpolines. The problem is that AMD's LFENCE/JMP-based implementation of Retpolines isn't good enough to fend off BHI, so the chipmaker is shifting to general Retpolines. The impact of the transition for AMD processors is unknown, but Phoronix is already conducting new tests to find out. "

Yet the exploit has been only demo'd on Intel. Wonderful spin as always Terry.

 

[TerryLaze]

Yet the exploit has been only demo'd on Intel. Wonderful spin as always Terry.

What spin?
The article says that they are still in the process of benchmarking AMD cpus.

 

[bigdragon]

I care about this vulnerability at work and don't mind the performance hit. Proprietary business data needs to stay safe. NDAs need to be respected and enforced. The workplace is a hacking target.

I don't care about this vulnerability at home. I don't want the performance hit. The risk is so low. The data attackers can get is not of significant value. I don't want my computer hardware sliding back a generation or more in terms of performance.

Intel has so many CPUs out there. Maybe it's time for them to start having "S" variants too where Spectre is not mitigated and full performance is provided.

 

[Specter0420]

I care about this vulnerability at work and don't mind the performance hit. Proprietary business data needs to stay safe. NDAs need to be respected and enforced. The workplace is a hacking target.

I don't care about this vulnerability at home. I don't want the performance hit. The risk is so low. The data attackers can get is not of significant value. I don't want my computer hardware sliding back a generation or more in terms of performance.

Intel has so many CPUs out there. Maybe it's time for them to start having "S" variants too where Spectre is not mitigated and full performance is provided.

I agree. I fly VR flight sims, one of the few cases where the best possible single-core performance available today isn't even close to enough. I have more than five working laptops and a modern smartphone for banking, investment accounts, and private messages... Give me the option for 90, 120, or 144Hz VR at the cost of security, that's acceptable to me. 60 FPS just isn't good enough.

 

[hannibal]

Do I remember wrong that these needs to get physical access to the computer, so yeah... More work related. But if these work via internet... Then it is problem also at home usage!

 

[boju]

Don't want nor concerned. Hopefully this patch is not forced from Ms, that's the only way it'll be compulsory. If it is then I'd like to know which kb update is it so i can block.

 

[STbob]

Nice article, keep up the work on this. I have some older Dell servers and the spectre and meltdown on hyperV is so slow I have to turn the patches off and risk the low percentage chance of something getting in the server core OS. (low) the slowdown is real and annoying.
I'm looking at newer servers but they cost $$$ and are actually slower with patches on vs my older gen servers without patches. This is not right, paying for 2023 servers that perform like 2010 unpatched. Big step backwards.

 

[Eximo]

Read beyond the headline.

"But again, workloads that don't rely on I/O or networking didn't show significant performance loss. These include gaming, web browsing, and other daily tasks."

So basically if you are using your computer for actual work tasks, a possible big performance hit, casual use, not so much.