Massive security flaw found in Intel CPUs, patch could hit performance by up to 30%

[Questors]

Except that it doesn't really work like that in the real world. Intel is a global company and has a big market lead, so they can pretty much sell us what they want, since our options and influece are limited. Their stock will take a hit, someone may get fired, then they'll promise to do better in the future and life will go on.

Actually, it does if the Gub'ment doesn't take taxpayer money to "bail out" a business. Automakers are also global, very global. As a matter of fact, several big automakers sold off global assets to stay in business even with the handout. So is Toshiba and they had to sell off their *priceless* Nand operations to even come up with a restructuring plan. Their fate is still not certain. Businesses go out of business every day for lack of quality, desired products or services and/or mismanagement, in the real world.

I once worked at the largest bed and bath product maker in the world. They had YUGE facilities. Plants so big, one could literally get lost. They were global. The area I now live in was littered with their various manufacturing plants. The business has been gone for a few years now and nearly all the physical structures are gone. Fields now grow where they stood not very long ago. They HAD a great product. They got too big and too loose with their money. Bam! The real world hit like a lead brick.

Not selling anything is usually worse than selling something they _may_ need to compensate for later on _in some markets_. After all, this is not a vitamin pill that will kill babies, just something that will affect performance in some applications. Remember that Intel's only purpose is making money for its shareholders, as is the case with any company that has shareholders. If it stops selling it's product, it is not fulfilling it's purpose. This was a calculated risk, and one that they will likely not be punished for very severely.

I am well aware of this. It was rhetorical. My point is, they should dig deep to compensate product purchases made since being made aware. I probably should have stated that more directly. I am not one of the possible recipients as I have not made a purchase of their products in 2017, when they supposedly found out about this.

 

[PetrolHead]

Actually, it does if the Gub'ment doesn't take taxpayer money to "bail out" a business. Automakers are also global, very global. As a matter of fact, several big automakers sold off global assets to stay in business even with the handout. So is Toshiba and they had to sell off their *priceless* Nand operations to even come up with a restructuring plan. Their fate is still not certain. Businesses go out of business every day for lack of quality, desired products or services and/or mismanagement, in the real world.

If the company is big enough or important enough for the local economy, the government unfortunately may have a significant incentive to support them. Not that I think it's always the best choice in the long run even if it would lead to disastrous short-term consequences locally. And you're of course right, businesses, even big ones, go out of business regularly due to various reasons. However, I still disagree with the statement "you either make a good product or you go down the tubes", especially in this case, where competition is very limited. Before EPYC there was in practice no alternative to Intel's CPUs if you were looking to build a supercomputer and before Ryzen consumers pretty much only bought AMD if they didn't like Intel, didn't know what they were buying or got a great deal on EoL hardware. While Intel doesn't exactly have a monopoly, there isn't much competition either (in certain markets; Intel is in practice a nobody for example in the smartphone market). This gives Intel space to make mistakes.

 

[DelJo63]

Windows users should check out this feature, which looks at Windows 10 performance before and after the Meltdown flaw emergency patch. It appears that, as suspected, the performance impact for most desktop users, and gamers especially, appears negligible.

 

[DelJo63]

My old anchor GRC.COM has a nice tool to inspect your system and diagnose your exposure to Meltdown and Spectre attacks.



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