[Beowulf] [upgrade strategy] Intel CPU design bug & security flaw - kernel fix imposes performance penalty

[Prentice Bisbal]

Any statement from Intel, or any other chip manufacturer regarding the 
performance impact of these fixes should be viewed with a healthy dose 
of skepticism.  These companies have an interest in downplaying the 
impact of these exploits/fixes to protect their stock prices.

I would believe the performance of 3rd-party companies who have measured 
the performance, like RHEL who support multiple processor vendors (AMD, 
Intel, etc.), and have less interest in a specific processor selling 
better or worse. I would believe these numbers from RHEL more than I 
would  those from Intel:

https://access.redhat.com/articles/3307751


On 01/08/2018 10:31 AM, Xingqiu Yuan wrote:
> Intel recently claimed that their bug fix gives little affect on the 
> chip's performances last week.
>
> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 10:19 AM, Prentice Bisbal <pbisbal at pppl.gov 
> <mailto:pbisbal at pppl.gov>> wrote:
>
>     On 01/05/2018 07:35 PM, Gerald Henriksen wrote:
>
>         On Fri, 5 Jan 2018 17:32:19 -0500, you wrote:
>
>             According to several articles I read today:
>
>             Meltdown (1 exploit)is Intel-specific
>             Spectre  (2 different exploits) affects just about every
>             processor on
>             the planet.
>
>         This is correct, and the other key difference is that so far
>         there is
>         only a solution to Meltdown.
>
>         The below linked page has this to say about Spectre:
>
>         "As it is not easy to fix, it will haunt us for quite some time"
>
>         Fedora has linked to this page for more info on the two:
>
>         https://spectreattack.com/
>
>
>     I haven't checked out that link yet, but from what I read, spectre
>     is also much harder to exploit, too, which mitigates the risk of
>     spectre to some extent.
>
>     Prentice
>
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