No announcement about Meltdown/Spectre?

[caractacus]

So where is the announcement about Meltdown/Spectre, and what is being done about it? Has a patch been issued for 18.3?

[jimallyn]

There are probably a dozen threads about Meltdown/Spectre on the forums. There is no announcement, because at this moment there is nothing to announce. Linux kernel developers are working on it, as are Windows developers, and I would assume developers of other affected systems.

[moonstroller]

Is there any CPU that is not effected by these exploit procedures?

[jimallyn]

Some say this doesn't affect AMD processors, others are not so sure. Some say it doesn't affect Intel processors manufactured prior to 1995. (And how many of us still have one of those?) Apparently some ARM processors are affected, but I don't know for sure which ones. (I have heard that most of those currently being used in smartphones are affected, but I don't know that for sure.) I would guess that Z80s and 6502s aren't affected, and I imagine my HP41-CV calculator isn't affected.

[aes2011]

https://insights.ubuntu.com/2018/01/04/ ... abilities/

[Spearmint2]

This seems to be the major thread on all of that.

viewtopic.php?f=58&t=260764

[Pjotr]

Firefox 57.0.4 contains a (partial) fix for this:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/5 ... ox-browser

[Teksonik]

Intel's CEO sold all of his stock ?

https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... questions/

That's got to be an SEC violation and a criminal act ?

[Spearmint2]

Direct Holders (Forms 3 and 4)
Name Shares Date Reported
BRYANT ANDY D 416,389 Dec 28, 2017
KRZANICH BRIAN M 250,000 Nov 28, 2017
YOFFIE DAVID B 50,005 Jul 23, 2017
SMITH STACY J 157,419 Oct 31, 2017
BRYANT DIANE M 110,844 Oct 31, 2017
POTTRUCK DAVID S 95,852 Nov 16, 2017
BARSHEFSKY CHARLENE 82,016 Jul 23, 2017
PEARSON GREGORY R 81,909 Sep 5, 2016
DECKER SUSAN L 75,243 Jan 22, 2016
HUNDT REED E 73,144 Jul 23, 2017

https://finance.yahoo.com/lookup?s=INTEL

[sylnsr]

Itanium and Atom processors before 2013 are also supposed to be unaffcted

[all41]

Itanium and Atom processors before 2013 are also supposed to be unaffcted

Hopefully there will be a list of the affected processors

[absque fenestris]

Intel Atom N270

[Cosmo.]

Hopefully there will be a list of the affected processors

See here.

[Sir Charles]

The negative impact of the security patches on system performance seems to have been exaggerated, at least according to the results of the benchmark tests done by people at Phoronix:

"Overall most of our benchmarks this week of the new Linux Kernel Page Table Isolation (KPTI) patches coming as a result of the Meltdown vulnerability have shown minimal impact overall on system performance. The exceptions have obviously been with workloads having high kernel interactions like demanding I/O cases and in terms of real-world impact, databases."

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... inux&num=1

[all41]

Hopefully there will be a list of the affected processors

See here.

My workstations use Xeon W3550 chips
the Xeon 3500 series is not included in this list--wonder why that is?

[Cosmo.]

Possibly you are in luck and this series is not affected.

[Spearmint2]

Considering how many Xeon chips ARE affected, I'd take it on faith that probably all of them are.

[all41]

Considering how many Xeon chips ARE affected, I'd take it on faith that probably all of them are.

Kind of what I was thinking as well, and with closed source codes how would one know for sure?