Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: jr2 on January 02, 2018, 06:59:51 pm
-
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/
http://reddit.com/r/intel/comments/7npcfx/kernel_memory_leaking_intel_processor_design_flaw/
EDIT:
Looks like we've got initial fix benchmarks:
Hardware Unboxed initially benchmarked the fix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qZksorJAuY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qZksorJAuY).
Also, there's a second vulnerability, Spectre, that affects Intel, AMD, and ARM (smartphone processors):
Guess what: it's not just Intel users.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/business/computer-flaws.html
We're all ****ed.
AMD response to Spectre (they say risk for AMD chips for the two Spectre attacks is "zero, and almost-zero" because of the way their processors are designed - we'll see):
https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/speculative-execution
EDIT2:
Linux excludes AMD from Meltdown patch: (as they claim they aren't affected by it)
https://twitter.com/phoronix/status/948725135971897345
http://reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7nzts4/linux_accepts_excluding_amd_from_pti_if_amd_is_so/
-
This is bad news.
For those of us running data centers and cloud applications, that is; gaming performance, at least on Linux, does not seem to be affected. (https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=x86-PTI-Initial-Gaming-Tests)
-
The moment I saw
Think of the kernel as God sitting on a cloud, looking down on Earth. It's there, and no normal being can see it, yet they can pray to it.
I immediately made my mind up
that this is a non-issue
-
lol, it's definitely not a non-issue though; a 15% performance hit on database queries, which is what some of the benchmarks are showing, is a big ****ing deal
-
initial speculation was that the (still very hush-hush) exploit potentially involved direct circumvention of memory protection through preemptive execution, far more serious than just compromising KASLR
-
Well, isn't that lovely. Suddenly the performance benefits of Intel chips over the last several years aren't looking as great as they once did. What a screwup.
-
It should be noted that the performance hit from this is more nuanced than '15% slower'; it's heavily dependent on the task. If your main interest in CPU performance is for gaming, it looks like this isn't going to be a very big deal. If you're a database admin, it might well be.
-
Now that could explain why I'm seeing Kernel level crashes occasionally. Especially if this "feature" allows accessing protected memory just like that.
But it could be that Windows 7 just doesn't like 4K too.
-
Guess what: it's not just Intel users.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/business/computer-flaws.html
We're all ****ed.
-
Guess what: it's not just Intel users.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/business/computer-flaws.html
We're all ****ed.
To be clear, there's two separate flaws; Meltdown only affects Intel CPUs, and requires a performance-draining patch (which will also be applied to the non-affected AMD chips, because "glory to Intel!" (no, really!)) and Spectre, which affects all (to include the ARM processors in your smartphones) systems. There is no known fix for Spectre, besides new hardware.
So yeah, we're screwed once Spectre leaks.
-
Exactly. Meltdown is the least of our problems.
-
To be clear, there's two separate flaws; Meltdown only affects Intel CPUs, and requires a performance-draining patch (which will also be applied to the non-affected AMD chips, because "glory to Intel!" (no, really!))
You're so very wrong sometimes. All we know is that AMD has said that their chips aren't affected by Meltdown and that the Linux Kernel devs have decided to err on the side of caution and not accept a patch that would disable the Meltdown fix on AMD processors at this time. This isn't about "glory to intel", this is about not trusting a company blindly when they say something.
-
To be clear, there's two separate flaws; Meltdown only affects Intel CPUs, and requires a performance-draining patch (which will also be applied to the non-affected AMD chips, because "glory to Intel!" (no, really!))
You're so very wrong sometimes. All we know is that AMD has said that their chips aren't affected by Meltdown and that the Linux Kernel devs have decided to err on the side of caution and not accept a patch that would disable the Meltdown fix on AMD processors at this time. This isn't about "glory to intel", this is about not trusting a company blindly when they say something.
We'll see. (I heard that line, not sure if I buy it. While initially true perhaps, my prediction is Intel will be pushing very hard to leave AMD in the same basket as them until they have refreshed the market with their own CPUs again).
Let me re-read the article and see if I can find the part where AMD not being affected is pointed out (made me pretty sure there's no way around it).
Edit: also, see the Linus comments (https://www.techpowerup.com/240250/dear-intel-if-a-glaring-exploit-affects-intel-cpus-and-not-amd-its-a-flaw) at the end of this article.
Edit2: alright, in addition to Linus complaints, here's the AMD response in the article. This should be easy: if we know or can test for the the veracity of the claim by AMD about how their processors work, then AMD systems should not be patched. If we don't know, err on the side of caution. The claim:
However, it may be that the vulnerability in Intel's chips is worse than the above mitigation bypass. In an email (https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/12/27/2) to the Linux kernel mailing list over Christmas, AMD said it is not affected. The wording of that message, though, rather gives the game away as to what the underlying cockup is:
AMD processors are not subject to the types of attacks that the kernel page table isolation feature protects against. The AMD microarchitecture does not allow memory references, including speculative references, that access higher privileged data when running in a lesser privileged mode when that access would result in a page fault.
So what you're saying is, we don't know if that statement is true, and we cant verify its accuracy in any reasonable time to not patch AMD systems as well? Also, Linus Torvalds is a pretty smart guy. Why is he upset? I kind of gathered the patch isn't being made easy to disable on AMD systems or something:
From Linus Torvalds <>
Date Wed, 3 Jan 2018 15:51:35 -0800
Subject Re: Avoid speculative indirect calls in kernel
On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 3:09 PM, Andi Kleen wrote:
> This is a fix for Variant 2 in https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privileged-memory-with-side.html
> Any speculative indirect calls in the kernel can be tricked to execute any kernel code, which may allow side channel attacks that can leak arbitrary kernel data.
Why is this all done without any configuration options?
A *competent* CPU engineer would fix this by making sure speculation doesn't happen across protection domains. Maybe even a L1 I$ that is keyed by CPL.
I think somebody inside of Intel needs to really take a long hard look at their CPU's, and actually admit that they have issues instead of writing PR blurbs that say that everything works as designed.
.. and that really means that all these mitigation patches should be written with "not all CPU's are crap" in mind.
Or is Intel basically saying "we are committed to selling you **** forever and ever, and never fixing anything"?
Because if that's the case, maybe we should start looking towards the ARM64 people more.
Please talk to management. Because I really see exactly two possibibilities:
Intel never intends to fix anything
OR
these workarounds should have a way to disable them.
Which of the two is it?
Linus
-
jr2 do you even use linux
-
jr2 do you even use linux
1) Not relevant
2) Yes
3) Google: MOS 6694
Edit: I took that as some form of dismissal and responded to that. Apologies if I'm mistaken. My response is a bit twatish if you didn't mean yours as a putdown.
-
Hardware Unboxed initially benchmarked the fix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qZksorJAuY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qZksorJAuY).
A tl;dw version: Most user tasks and benchmarks aren't affected beyond the margin of error, including rendering and gaming.
-
The reason I asked, jr2, is that desktop users mostly use Windows and we have no idea if Windows has applied the slowdown to AMD chips. Also I read somewhere (lwn, probably) that AMD’s pull request has been officially merged into a future kernel.
-
The reason I asked, jr2, is that desktop users mostly use Windows and we have no idea if Windows has applied the slowdown to AMD chips. Also I read somewhere (lwn, probably) that AMD’s pull request has been officially merged into a future kernel.
So why is Linus getting twitchy (well, he always is, but why is he pointing at Intel)? And again, my personal use of Linux has no bearing. Also, FYI, I run Intel (Ryzen wasn't out yet when I built this, my wife's MacBook is of course Intel, and my two PC laptops were i7-2670s - AMD wasn't competing well then either) so I'm affected regardless (although as a personal user it's probably not significant, or so they say... gotta check out those banchmarks Mito posted).
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I read that as basically "stop talking about things you know nothing about". I'm not an expert by any means, but I can understand concepts, and I can understand that actual experts are perturbed (Linus Torvalds, kinda hope he knows what he's talking about).
Of course this is all developing and we'll have a clearer picture when the dust settles.
-
AMD response to Spectre (they say risk for AMD chips for the two Spectre attacks is "zero, and almost-zero" because of the way their processors are designed - we'll see):
https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/speculative-execution
-
Added a tl;dw piece to my previous post. I guess not everyone has the time to watch a 10min long video, so that could be useful.
I am not very surprised by how Linus acts. This is a goddamn mess from his point of view, I guess, and I somehow get the feeling that it isn't the first or second time when his hair is going gray over what Intel is doing with their dominant in the market devices.
BTW, what's about that MOS thing? What did you refer to?
-
Intel is issuing firmware updates: https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-issues-updates-protect-systems-security-exploits/
-
AMD response to Spectre (they say risk for AMD chips for the two Spectre attacks is "zero, and almost-zero" because of the way their processors are designed - we'll see):
Until I see independent confirmation I suspect that's bull****, because there's no obvious fatal flaw in the processor design that Spectre requires (unlike Intel not checking for page faults during speculative execution) and the security researchers explicitly said AMD chips are vulnerable.
Edit: every analysis of Spectre I've read basically says the same thing: it requires only speculative execution, memory caching and access to a precise timer, to bypass software bounds checks and read the entire memory space. The upshot of this is that malicious Javascript on a webpage you visit can now read passwords stored elsewhere in your browser process' memory, though I believe mitigations against this specific vulnerability have already been deployed to the major browsers.
My hot take on this, so far, is this: this won't result in any big hack-the-planet scenarios, the same way the last half dozen giant vulnerabilities present in half the computing world didn't either. The most visible effect is probably going to be a) the giant PR ****storm for Intel and their reactions to it; and b) the technical fallout from Spectre turning the world of CPU architecture upside down.
-
BTW, what's about that MOS thing? What did you refer to?
That was just me getting tasty cause I thought someone was calling me technically illiterate. It's (was) my occupational specialty in the Marines. Doesn't mean I'm a genius, or a specialist in every field covered, but it does mean I'm at least semi-competent.
-
Update:
Linux excludes AMD from Meltdown patch: (as they claim they aren't affected by it)
https://twitter.com/phoronix/status/948725135971897345
http://reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7nzts4/linux_accepts_excluding_amd_from_pti_if_amd_is_so/
-
Windows patches are available as of yesterday. If it's not deploying, check your antivirus. Some interfere; I had to uninstall Avast, install the update, then reinstall Avast to get the version that supported the update.
-
Epic Games (of Fortnite) is having some issues with that patch (https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/forums/news/announcements/132642-epic-services-stability-update)
In case you wanted a real world example :shaking:
-
So I was planning on joining the current decade and getting my first smart phone within the next week or so. Is this thread telling me I need to wait for a new generation that won't be affected by this bug now?
-
So I was planning on joining the current decade and getting my first smart phone within the next week or so. Is this thread telling me I need to wait for a new generation that won't be affected by this bug now?
No. This bug is going to stay relevant for a few years; Chip design has such long lead times for redesigns that would mitigate these issues that it's going to take some time for chips that do not suffer from these issues to hit the markets. If you can wait another 2 or 3 years, you'll probably be able to get a fixed phone.
-
Well, at least i was already thinking about if i should upgrade my i7-2600k.
Yes it seems so. Maybe i should pick up one of the newer models that have the speed with spectre of my 2600k without Spectre. And in a few years i can buy a really brand new CPU that have the original speed again ;).
-
Well, at least i was already thinking about if i should upgrade my i7-2600k.
Yes it seems so. Maybe i should pick up one of the newer models that have the speed with spectre of my 2600k without Spectre. And in a few years i can buy a really brand new CPU that have the original speed again ;).
IKR? I was recently looking at finally upgrading from my 2600K, but now I'm not so sure if I should wait it out or make the move over to Zen (threadripper, yum....) ;7
-
OK, somebody give me the tl;dr.
For an average gamer who doesn't notice when his CPU is struggling or not to keep up with any given game, who is just fine with the stock cooler that came with it, will this problem cause any noticeable effect?
-
Inb4 the video I linked (near the end of the 1st page). Short version: No, it seems your gaming performance won't be affected, with some exceptions (like Fortnite mentioned before). Although I'm not sure how the overall snappyness of your operating system will look like, there's a possibility that it might be impacted (I heard that lots of stuff in newer Windows version tends to use virtualisation), although that isn't a 100% sure thing.
-
OK, somebody give me the tl;dr.
For an average gamer who doesn't notice when his CPU is struggling or not to keep up with any given game, who is just fine with the stock cooler that came with it, will this problem cause any noticeable effect?
And to expand on what Mito said: Most single-player games without a large multiplayer component are going to be unaffected, but once you hit massive multiplayer stuff (like Fortnite, PUBG or MMOs), you're going to see the experience get worse, because the db servers and virtual servers those games need just got much more resource-hungry.
-
Well, there are some games that needs more a good CPU instead of other good hardware. Games like Supreme Commander or Football Manager should be affected by this much more.
If you play SupCom on big maps with thousands of units or Football Manager with a big database and some leagues, the difference should be noticeable, especially if we are talking about a power loss up to 30%.
Even this games are one of very few exceptions that needs a very good CPU on the user end.
Even Ashes of Singularity has lesser CPU demands, because AoS does not calculate every single projectile as SupCom does which was able to occupy my 2600k easily in bigger battles... maybe i can play this Game only with some hundreds less units, now ^^.
-
Well, there are some games that needs more a good CPU. Games like Supreme Commander or Football Manager should be affected by this much more.
If you play SC on big maps with thousands of units or Football Manager with a big database and some leagues, the difference should be noticeable.
Even this games are one of very few exceptions that needs a good CPU on the user end.
Even Ashes of Singularity has lesser CPU demands, because AoS does not calculate every single projectile as SC does.
I don't think so. Remember that meltdown affects syscalls, which for games means disk IO more than anything else. Since games, as a rule, do not do disk IO in their performance-critical loops, they shouldn't be affected too much. You might see increased level load times in a few titles, but those generally aren't an issue; even streaming titles like large open-world games aren't going to see much of a performance degradation (since those titles are built to run well off of slow HDDs).
The performance issues seen in PUBG, for example (like the sudden proliferation of issues related to retrieving player models and names), are exclusively happening on the server side (PUBG seems to have a strict timeout for retrieving player data, and the lowered db performance seems to result in said retrieval failing more often now).
-
I heard PCI-E SSDs see a big impact (as they're fast enough to have the effect noticeable).
-
I heard PCI-E SSDs see a big impact (as they're fast enough to have the effect noticeable).
Not the case with my Lenovo Legion. Performance is not noticeably affected.
What I did find, however, is the latest security updates have finally killed my ability to use my old Auzentech Prelude 7.1 in a Windows 10 environment permanently. I've had to use a heavily-modded Win8 driver since installing 10 originally, and now even that is outright failing and either refusing to load or causing serious system problems (BSODs). Sigh. The onboard quality, even on an Asus mobo, really is inferior :(
-
Interesting article: (runnung into a predecessor of Meltdown / Spectre on the tri-core XBox 360)
https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/01/07/finding-a-cpu-design-bug-in-the-xbox-360/
-
I heard PCI-E SSDs see a big impact (as they're fast enough to have the effect noticeable).
Not the case with my Lenovo Legion. Performance is not noticeably affected.
What I did find, however, is the latest security updates have finally killed my ability to use my old Auzentech Prelude 7.1 in a Windows 10 environment permanently. I've had to use a heavily-modded Win8 driver since installing 10 originally, and now even that is outright failing and either refusing to load or causing serious system problems (BSODs). Sigh. The onboard quality, even on an Asus mobo, really is inferior :(
My X-Fi XtremeMusic is still holding on in Windows 7. What's finally going to get it is whenever the next time I have to upgrade the motherboard, it's almost certainly not going to have a regular PCI slot for it. Now if only my Logitech z906 speakers hadn't crapped out just a little bit past the 2 year warranty...
-
I heard PCI-E SSDs see a big impact (as they're fast enough to have the effect noticeable).
Not the case with my Lenovo Legion. Performance is not noticeably affected.
What I did find, however, is the latest security updates have finally killed my ability to use my old Auzentech Prelude 7.1 in a Windows 10 environment permanently. I've had to use a heavily-modded Win8 driver since installing 10 originally, and now even that is outright failing and either refusing to load or causing serious system problems (BSODs). Sigh. The onboard quality, even on an Asus mobo, really is inferior :(
Quick Googling to find:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1622263/auzentech-x-fi-prelude-7-1-windows-10-drivers
Which after some conversation about bad links in the thread leads to:
http://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/
I've heard of Daniel K drivers before, on the topic of getting my old SoundBlaster X-Fi (or somesuch) (EDIT: just remembered, it was a Sound Blaster Audigy Live! IIRC) working on Windows 7 when Creative dropped the ball on them as well. (I've sinced moved on to a new PC, and haven't gotten a sound card yet -- not sure if I'm going to, I'm using the Logitech G933 headset, which has its own USB sound card. (Unless I'm mistaken and it's still using the on-board sound and piping it back up the USB?!)
-
It's Daniel K's driver releases that I've been using; it's that which the patches appear to have killed (or its one hell of a coincidence).
-
Uninstall / reinstall of Dan K drivers didn't work?
-
Uninstall / reinstall of Dan K drivers didn't work?
Nope. Wouldn't initialize no matter what I did; "not enough system resources assigned" appeared in the device manager info, and trying to go to the Detail tab sent the system into BSOD with IRQL NOT LESS THAN.
I tried four or five times in new and ever more creative ways; the system just stopped recognizing those drivers after the windows patches and steadfastly refused to load them again.
-
I attempted contact, we'll see if he responds (linked him here as well)