That's not true at all. HPET is very reliable and not prone to skewing at all. The problem is that accessing an HPET timestamp (via QPC in Windows) is very slow

That's not true at all. HPET is very reliable and not prone to skewing at all. The problem is that accessing an HPET timestamp (via QPC in Windows) is very slow on certain Intel and AMD platforms. The HPET bug was already discovered last July, so Meltdown and Spectre have nothing to do with the bug but maybe adding performance penalties on top. Read this for details and try the timer benchmark in there: https://www.overclockers.at/articles/the-hpet-bug-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt https://www.overclockers.at/articles/the-hpet-bug-what-it-is...