Intel Urges OEMs and End Users To Stop Deploying Spectre Patch As It May 'Introduce Higher Than Expected Reboots' (intel.com) 155
Intel executive vice president Neil Shenoy said on Monday that the chip-maker has identified the source of some of the recent problems, so it is now recommended that users skip the available patches. From the blog post: We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors and end users stop deployment of current versions, as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior.
Oh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Apart from a planned a kernel upgrade I never reboot.
I thought my daily reboots would go away when I upgraded to WinME. No such luck.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought my daily reboots would go away when I upgraded to WinME. No such luck.
The "reboot at least every 43 days" bug that plagued Windows 98 went away when upgrading to Windows Me, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Because it never stayed up 43 days in a row.
Re: (Score:1)
My systems also don’t reboot spontaneously.
You're going to love these patches then. Life is full of new experiences. :(
Re: Oh? (Score:1)
You clearly only have a few hundred servers. If you had thousands you would start to notice several unexplained reboots year. Some you would blame on hardware, others on software, some would be unexplained. You might post your kernel dump expecting some sort of mass panic that you had found a crash but most likely it would just go with the thousands of other crash reports and you would realise that kernels are full of unfixed undiagnosed bugs.
Re: (Score:1)
Until I upgraded to high sierra to get the most recent spectre/meltdown patches, I had 169 days of uptime on my macbookpro.
# uptime
15:15:36 up 2010 days, 3:10, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
so... the patches are as bad as the processors? (Score:2)
Intel Doeshide.
Re: (Score:3)
It is a pretty remarkable euphemism. Imagine prescription drugs had disclaimers written like this:
"Notice: This product may introduce higher than expected deaths."
Sign me up!
Re: (Score:1)
My dad died in pneumonia after having being given Risperdal while he had Alzheimers, something the FDA recommends against doing considering exactly that. I don't know if the manufacturer say so themselves but supposedly it is the case.
Drug Warnings (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When you're running thousands of systems, spontaneous reboots happen. Could be due to some power fluctuation caused by a flaky PSU for example. Intel's now saying that the expected number of spontaneous reboots has risen with the new microcode.
When running a few systems you shouldn't notice spontaneous reboots.
good (Score:1)
Iâ(TM)m glad they are telling us to leave our systems insecure, that is helpful advice
Re: (Score:2)
Re: good (Score:2)
Be fancy, or be functional. The iPhone on iOS 11 can't do both.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: good (Score:2)
As soon as I saw this iPhone 7 was affected following the upgrade to iOS 11, I searched for the option to turn that feature off. I can confirm it is present in 11.2.
Good Timing (Score:2)
Couldn't be bothered to do it right the first time.
Higher than... what? (Score:5, Funny)
"Higher than expected reboots"? What kind of newspeak is it?
Re:Higher than... what? (Score:5, Funny)
Its like how a car with a rusted out brake lines has a higher than expected number air bag deployments. You expected zero but Intel has exceeded all expectations once again.
Re: (Score:1)
Well, it sounds better than "random system crashes caused by a shitty, untested patch we rushed out the door".
Intel has seriously shat the bed on this one.
Re:Higher than... what? (Score:4, Insightful)
It means "we will continue to fuck you with shoddy products". Linus is right on the mark for this one.
Re: (Score:3)
Maurice Moss: [picking up the phone] Hello, IT... Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
How About New Silicon, Then? (Score:1)
When can we deploy that, Intel?
Re: (Score:1)
whenever NSA signs off on the new backdoor.
Re:How About New Silicon, Then? (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck Intel. Enough is enough. I'm ordering four billion transistors on digi-key right fucking now.
Re: (Score:2)
So um... How many reboots (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Was Intel expecting? Me, I was expecting one to install the patch.
You don't need a reboot for the Intel patches. Those are microcode updates, which can be applied on a running system.
(Reverting to an earlier version of microcode requires a reboot, though.)
Intel has known about the vuln for almost 7 months (Score:5, Informative)
Did they just roll out a patch in the last 30 days, or what's going on over there? This is the kind of instability one would expect from a hastily produced patch developed over a month by a small team. According to reports, Intel has known about the vuln for 7+ months. Were they not working on a patch this whole time? I would assume they were on iteration 5 or 6 of the patch by the time they broke the embargo a week early.
Re:Intel has known about the vuln for almost 7 mon (Score:4, Insightful)
They thought they spent enough money astro-turfing that they wouldn't need to spend any more developing a patch. When the astro-turfing campaign failed, they had to scramble to produce something that nobody would use but that everyone would believe was "best effort."
and let amd eypc crush them in benchmarks (Score:1)
and let amd eypc crush them in benchmarks
Re: Intel has known about the vuln for almost 7 mo (Score:1)
"In any case, [Intel] failed us"
Dude: Intel is a corporation. It's certainly seems to have done very well for those that matter... it's shareholders. Are you a shareholder?
If otoh, you want to buy chips from somewhere beholden and accountable to the public, help figure out the Open Hardware movement.
Intel has known about the vuln for almost 7 months (Score:2)
Re-post: Intel: Years of insufficient management. [slashdot.org]
"Higher than usual" my ass (Score:1, Informative)
Some famous person should finally bomb intel over their "higher than usual" BS. It's an insult to every single person who's reading this idiotic Slashdot news post. Non-broken "systems" don't have "unexpected reboots" ever. FFS.
Re:Fuck Intel... (Score:4, Interesting)
Expect to be waiting quite a while then.... I have a strong feeling that Intel simply doesn't know how to do a proper fix for this that isn't just another kludge on any processor they will be making for the forseeable future that has already passed through its design phase.
That's not to say that I think they won't figure one out, eventually... but I'd honestly be surprised if we see a proper fix (one that isn't just a hack-on patch that works at a cost) before 2020.
Looking forward to Linus's response... (Score:5, Interesting)
... to Intel's announcement.
Especially given what he had to say about the patches in the first place:
http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/l... [iu.edu]
Re: (Score:2)
You may wait awhile. For Linus to comment on patches is reasonable. He rarely comments in an interesting way on things that he has criticized being withdrawn.
Re: (Score:2)
As with all things Unix, you're supposed to generate output on failures, not success.
Re: (Score:2)
I missed that one somehow, that was fantastic. Almost to the level of his famous nvidia rant.
The inevitable result of "ready, fire, aim" (Score:2)
Maybe it's time for a slightly more measured approach?
Re:The inevitable result of "ready, fire, aim" (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that they took half a year to deliver this cluster**** could be an indicator that no true "fix" is possible or that the performance losses of a true fix would have a far worse overall impact than just accepting random reboots.
I understand that they'd likely need a multi-government bailout and years of production time to replace all of the broken processors, but facing reality and moving forward with a real fix feels like the healthiest thing for the system as a whole. How much time and money is being wasted worldwide by IT folks and software engineers on this fiasco?
Re:The inevitable result of "ready, fire, aim" (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming they spent half a year working on a fix. I think it's far more likely that:
2 months were wasted by engineers trying to convince management that the problem really was potentially very serious
2 months waiting for management to try to figure out who to blame and how to make sure it wouldn't reflect negatively on them or impact their departmental budget or personal performance bonuses
1.5 months for PR to come up with the best possible language to make sure they could paint the entire industry as being equally affected, while simultaneously the lawyers tried to find the largest possible scraps of TP to cover their corporate *sses
.5 months working on a fix
Re: (Score:1)
You skipped 2 months having a few engineers trying to convince their peers that this is real. Don't discount the effects of self-indoctrination when you've been telling yourself and your peers that this clever, patented hack that beats the competitors is perfectly safe and any imaginable attack is "purely academic."
Re: (Score:2)
Do we really know they were actively working on a fix for half a year? I hadn't seen anything but speculation to that effect, but may have missed it.
Re: (Score:2)
Do we really know they were actively working on a fix for half a year?
We know that they should have been.actively working on a fix for half a year.
Re: (Score:1)
This - it's not truly fixable.
He should have just said... (Score:5, Insightful)
"We recommend everyone stop deployment of Intel CPUs". Higher than expected reboots? More than 1 to install the update? The root cause is design flaws and inadequate testing of major low level patches. Google new about these issues months ago and Intel did (or should have) too. They rushed the release so the stock price does not tank not because it was ready. They normally take many months or years to test these design changes or updates and now it will be a long time before they have new CPUs that don't need fixes (or at least these fixes). May be they should have worked around the clock months ago when they did not need to be rushed.
Re: (Score:2)
I had better issue a patch for that.
Re:He should have just said... (Score:4, Informative)
Spectre is nearly everyone but the Raspberry Pi. Meltdown is just Intel. And Meltdown is the one that's (currently) really serious.
I'm rather sure that Spectre will eventually be serious, so people need to be working HARD to solve it, but Meltdown is the currently critical one, and that's just Intel.
Re: (Score:2)
Meltdown is just Intel.
Well technically Meltdown is also IBM. The Power7 through 9 are affected.
Re: (Score:2)
Their Problem could be (Score:5, Insightful)
Which leaves them flailing about wildly for some other appearance of a solution/solution to, at the very least cover their butts, mean while costing them a little as possible.
Just my 2 cents
Re:Their Problem could be (Score:4, Insightful)
Replacing the CPUs is likely something they can't do anytime soon, since I'd guess none of the next 2 years worth of CPUs will have a fix for this. Spectre can't be fixed in the general case, I believe.
Replacing is really the only viable option for performance-critical applications (which most users don't have), but Intel is never going to give them out. I can see after some massive lawsuits that they offer a 10% discount on a new CPU (for which you need a new motherboard). It's likely going to help their bottom line.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure that Spectre *can* be fixed, though we may not currently know the best way. But Meltdown is the current real problem (as opposed to the problem a few months from now, when a new exploit is revealed).
And it's my guess that Intel can't fix Meltdown in any of it's current chips without disabling speculative execution entirely. Which, of course, would solve Spectre, but would also make them a LOT slower than AMD.
And by "Intel's current chips" I'm including all those whose masks have already been desi
I bought two CPUs last year (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
but as a gamer the 5-10% hit I'm seeing
That's quite interesting given that this isn't born out in any of the very many benchmarks that have been done on this. There were plenty to show that gamers experience precisely zero difference. There were more that show in most cases if your CPU is only a year old and has PCID you won't see anything near a 10% hit.
Now if you said you were a server administrator and your corporate webserver or backend database started chugging, that would be quite believable.
But by all means class action away. I'm sure the
Go look up Witcher 3 benches (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting, thanks for pointing that out. The very first review I found showed a 9.8% penalty on Witcher 3 while zero penalty on most of the other games under test. Interestingly Witcher 3 also gave the highest frame rate, does that mean the rest of the games are GPU bound and Witcher 3 presents an unnaturally high CPU load?
If so what is it about Witcher 3 that taxes the CPU more than other games? Isn't it just an 3rd person RPG?
To be fair you need a 1080 to see the dips (Score:2)
"Unexpected reboot" (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words their patch crashes your machine.
This reminds me of the various colorful circumlocutions people around the world use for death. In France someone who dies "eats daisies by the roots". In Germany he "gives up his spoon". In China he "goes to sell salted duck eggs."
I suppose in Intel-speak death would be "non-transitory pulmonary quiescence."
Re: (Score:2)
Bought the farm.
Bit the dust.
Kicked the bucket.
Pushing up daisies.
Taking a dirt nap.
Sleeping with the fishes.
Re: (Score:2)
Ceased to be.
An EX-PARROT!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Late.
Stiff.
Re: (Score:1)
Shuffled off this mortal coil.
Paid the debt that cancels all others.
Turned toes up to the daisies.
Became food for worms.
Became a permanent man of leisure.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah, it's just pining for the fjords.
Re: (Score:2)
Sailors used that term LONG before any Italian Mafia existed.
Bravo Intel (Score:2)
Golfclap
*GOLFCLAP*
That's how its supposed to work? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't steal data from a CPU while its power cycling!
--
Round and a round and a round we go
Re: (Score:1)
Can't steal anything when my Xeon running win7 is "patched" like this:
Xeon X5680 after KB4056894 [youtube.com]
Pooched patches (Score:1)
So after having months and months to create a patch to their borked design, they fail.
Now in a few measly weeks (days) they have a real patch that's going to do the job.
For everyone (including me) that started performance testing patches before you deploy them.... back to Step 1.
Smoking causes higher than expected deaths (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's gets worse! (Score:5, Funny)
Not only has the microcode patch caused unexpected reboots from Intel's CPUs but it's also causing spontaneous AMD purchases! ;)
So that's the meaning of "Intel Inside" (Score:1)
Why does anyone even bother patching Spectre? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Spectre cannot be practically used for any exploit - it's Intel PR's red herring, it's bullshit.
Just read up, educate yourselves (though half the people on /. are the proverbial choir I'm preaching to, I guess).
Re:Why does anyone even bother patching Spectre? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
The first link is a POC that a process can read it's own memory space and privilege level without explicitly accessing it. I wouldn't call it nothing since it could allow javascript to access scripts running in other tabs, but the utility is very limited compared to meltdown and browsers are already in the works that prevent it.
Meltdown really is orders of magnitude worse.
Re: (Score:2)
According to Google, you should enable full site isolation in the latest version of chrome and they have further mitigation in the works.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you even read that? First of all, the scenario in that example stores sensitive data in userspace - nobody does that. Second of all, and more critically, the code knew where to look for the data, which extremely unrealistic.
Goodbye Intel, Hello AMD (Score:1)
My next system will be AMD.
Lack of ECC support in desktop SKUs, cheeping out on PCIe lanes and a string of zero integrity marketing doublespeak including campaign to conflate meltdown /w spectre and now "higher than expected reboot" being the main reasons.
General existence of timing side channels against branch predictors has been public knowledge for at least 15 years. Now when a ridiculous UNRELATED problem is discovered in Intel silicon red alert spectre spectre spectre... they are breaking shit and cau
Their new slogan (Score:2)
Intel Inside!
(Sorry about your luck dude)
SHIT! Better Dump my INTEL stock! (Score:1)
Oh rite. Already did. http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-ceo-krzanich-sold-shares-after-company-was-informed-of-chip-flaw-2018-1
When is that fucker going to be charged?
Re: (Score:1)
Well WTF Intel?!? (Score:2)
Go to hell Intel.