8 ms·

AMD Immune to MDS Vulnerabilities

218 points by Boulth 7y ago

tcoff91 7y ago
What kind of performance penalty do all of these patches combined have on intel chips? I’m curious how much slower an intel chip is now versus before meltdown.
- the8472 7y ago
  There's no single number since it depends on your workload. Something that is syscall- and interrupt-heavy or does lots of task-switching will see far more overhead than pure number-crunching with properly allocated threads. Synthetic benchmarks can get you a penalty from anywhere from 1.001x and beyond 2x. Your workload also influences which mitigations you can safely turn off. If you're running a single-tenant system and don't need isolated security domains then you can turn them off. Future software improvements (io_uring!) may also recover some of those losses.
  - cookiecaper 7y ago
    >If you're running a single-tenant system and don't need isolated security domains then you can turn them off. This is the dirty secret that no one will let out because its ramifications on "the cloud" are very serious, and Microsoft, Amazon, et al have staked their futures on rent-seeking via cloud. These hardware bugs make the risks of multi-tenancy incontrovertible, and I would expect enterprise security departments to be clamoring for the return of hardware control. My popcorn is out to watch as the frantic inquisition against cloud heretics kicks into high[er] gear.
    - kccqzy 7y ago
      What? Single-tenancy and the cloud are pretty orthogonal. I can request single-tenant machines on EC2; they just cost more. But I still have the benefit of being able to create and delete an instance in just minutes.
      - cookiecaper 7y ago
        Multi-tenant is the cloud's linchpin and it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise. The offerings of and outlook for cloud providers would be very different without multi-tenancy. While single-tenant options may be available for some configurations, you'll pay through the nose, and there are many limitations (e.g., EBS-backed volumes attached to your single-tenant instances still run on multi-tenant hosts). Moreover, few if any of the managed cloud services, which are what really drive cloud adoption, have any concept of single tenancy. Even after all this, the risk is only partially mitigated, because you're trusting Amazon's management toolkit and staff to respect these boundaries and to not have any bugs that may inadvertently expose access or data to third parties. Considering single-tenancy is such a small segment of their business, I doubt this is a major consideration, and even if it is, it's a lot of eggs to put into a basket that's completely out of your control. There just isn't much of an argument for a group that's serious about security to commit hardcore to "the cloud", yet virtually every company I've encountered in the last few years is pushing this hard, and actively ostracizing anyone who tries to inject some moderation or sanity into it. I appreciate the convenience of cloud offerings as much as the next guy, but it's out of control, and the complete disregard for the implications of hardware bugs that fundamentally undermine the supposed security model is a great representation of that.
  - mort96 7y ago
    I don't know that there are many computers out there which don't need isolated security domains. Users run javascript all the time, cloud servers obviously need security domains, regular bare metal servers generally run internet-facing applications such as web servers as unprivileged users in case they contain RCE bugs.
    - kccqzy 7y ago
      High performance computing, machine learning training servers, CI/CD build servers, most database servers, home media servers, computers for industrial control, etc.
- citilife 7y ago
  It looks like there is generally a 18% - 40% performance hit with meltdown[1]: > On Linux distributions like Ubuntu 18.10 and Clear Linux the mitigation costs were about ~18% while both RHEL 8 Beta and openSUSE 15.0 had a nearly 40% hit. If we look at MDS mitigation for older MACs[2], it could be 40%: > Intel MDS Vulnerabilities Affecting 7th Gen And Below May Slow Macs By Up To 40%, Apple Warns If we look at MDS mitigation generally (if Intel is to be believed) we are looking at ~10% for most use cases[3] > Intel's benchmarks show a 6-14 percent drop in storage performance on a couple of Xeon processors, both with Hyper Threading enabled. Assuming that Intel is not showing a worst case scenario in any of these benchmarks, the hit to storage could be even bigger. > It's in workstations and data centers that mitigations are likely to have the biggest performance impact, depending on the workload. In a separate graph, for example, Intel shows a 19 percent drop in "server side Java" performance after disabling Hyper Threading on a Xeon Platinum 8180 processor (compared to having it turned on). In other words... total I have no idea what we'll be seeing. However, if we don't look at just "raw performance" in benchmarks when buying CPUs, AMD is likely a better purchase for most use cases at this point. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=spec-melt-8way&num=2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=spec-mel... [2] https://wccftech.com/intel-mds-vulnerabilities-affecting-7th-gen-and-below-may-slow-macs-by-up-to-40-apple-warns/ https://wccftech.com/intel-mds-vulnerabilities-affecting-7th... [3] https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-posts-benchmarks-showing-performance-impact-of-new-cpu-flaws/ https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-posts-benchmarks-showing-perfo...
  - the8472 7y ago
    Phoronix just released new benchmarks covering MDS mitigations and the combined costs of all mitigations . https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=mds-zombieload-mit&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=mds-zomb...
    - nullwasamistake 7y ago
      For the lazy: "If looking at the geometric mean for the tests run today, the Intel systems all saw about 16% lower performance out-of-the-box now with these default mitigations and obviously even lower if disabling Hyper Threading for maximum security. The two AMD systems tested saw a 3% performance hit with the default mitigations. While there are minor differences between the systems to consider, the mitigation impact is enough to draw the Core i7 8700K much closer to the Ryzen 7 2700X and the Core i9 7980XE to the Threadripper 2990WX." Not looking good for Intel at the moment. It should also be noted that there's believable rumors that the mitigations are not fully effective unless hyperthreading is disabled.
- bArray 7y ago
  I would be very interested to see those numbers arrogated, I have no idea whether these numbers are percentages of 100% original CPU performance or percentages of the remaining performance from the last bug. Either way, that's some serious performance loss. Even your normal light-weight users are going to start noticing slowdown. It appears as if nobody at Intel is doing anything other than cursory security analysis of processors. So far the cost has been performance, but I imagine there may be some bugs without micro-code mitigation. Not only this but it appears to be only a matter of time until Intel ME is broken too.
  - writelikeaYou 7y ago
    Why do you write like a moron? Use normal language instead of coming across like a piece of skit. You think it looks great but it looks like skit. And I am way more intelligent than you. Drop all the imposter syndrome bullskits. It's for your own good. You look like a tediot. In all walks of life. Please readjust and reassess.
dontbenebby 7y ago
What's a good Linux friendly laptop which uses AMD?
- klingonopera 7y ago
  My 2 cents as someone looking to get a new (mid-range gaming) laptop this year: The new ones coming out currently and within the next few months. You'll find the amount of AMD Ryzen in mobiles has skyrocketed the last two years. We now have AMD Ryzen CPUs combined with nVidia dGPU solutions, unthinkable just a year ago. I'm still waiting for the Ryzen 3750Hs to hit the (German) market, but if I had to buy tomorrow, I'd presently opt for the Asus FX505DT-EB73. This one has an NV dGPU, there's also an arguably Linux friendlier AMD RX 560 of that laptop available, too. I personally would also prefer an AMD dGPU solution, but the RX 560/580 is already old and I don't think AMD has a solution anytime soon either, unfortunately...
  - rl3 7y ago
    I'd say only go with NV GPU on Linux if you really need CUDA. Otherwise it's just pain, at least if you plan on using Wayland.
    - klingonopera 7y ago
      Yeah, if you even need dedicated GPUs at all, as usually it's Gamers who are looking for those and they're usually on Windows systems anyways (really looking forward to installing Windows 7 on the laptop I mentioned if I do get it this year - kinda mean that both ironic and not-ironic...). The built-in Radeon Vega 8 or 10 solutions on all mobile Ryzens are usually better and more efficient than current Intel counterparts, so if you don't need a dGPU, then that's one more reason to root for Team Green. EDIT: In case anyone reading isn't aware, nVidia is a biaaatch when it comes to drivers for Linux. Anyone looking for powerful GPUs in Linux machines, no matter desktop or laptop, has an easier life with AMD solutions. That's the reason there's an infamous photo of Linus showing the finger to nVidia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpOyKCNZYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpOyKCNZYw
beenBoutIT 7y ago
When the AMD equivalent of MDS is made known and given an acronym it will be an acronym that Intel is immune to.
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  While it is no doubt true that there are likely some vulnerabilities in AMD's chips that don't exist in Intel's, it is also true that because Intel has a larger market share, that's where most of the work is going to be done to find vulnerabilities, by the bad guys as well as security researchers. Much like how Microsoft Windows used to have a lot more security problems than any other OS, because they had >90% market share, so no one bothered to develop malware for anything else. Monocultures invite epidemics.
  - sam0x17 7y ago
    In this particular area though, it works both ways. Intel has so many researchers and resources, they are able to pursue tons of speculative execution / CPU doing something you wouldn't imagine it normally does experiments, and many of these find their way into their CPUs. A company with less resources might have less vulnerabilities of this nature simply because they don't have the resources to focus on that stuff in the first place. Just a theory.
  - alexozer 7y ago
    I'm not exactly sure the monoculture argument is valid for Windows vs. Linux though; Linux still dominated server usage while Windows was attacked more often, despite the fact that you could potentially reap a much greater reward infecting a server. Unix-based OSs were just inherently more secure for the most part.
    - rossdavidh 7y ago
      While it's certainly true that Linux does much better on servers than laptop/desktops, I don't think it ever got to the >90% market share that Windows had on laptop/desktop (although admittedly that depends on whose estimates you look at). But servers certainly do differ in regards monoculture in important ways, relative to laptop/desktop. It's also possibly significant that Linux on servers is split between Redhat and Ubuntu and others, who have some non-trivial differences in regards to security updates, etc. None of which means that Unix-based OS's don't have inherent advantages in regards to security, just that not having a monoculture target on their forehead also helps.
Maledictus 7y ago
I don't understand why hyperthreading needs to be turned off for maximum security? Wouldn't restricting it to only allow simultaneous threads that are part of the same process be enough?
- boulos 7y ago
  While that definitely restricts the attack surface, there are still situations where you are running untrusted code within a process (e.g., JITed code whether JavaScript or something else like eBPF). So it would require not only the kernel scheduler to be careful about scheduling threads to cores, but these applications as well (which is not something most people have ever bothered with, setting thread affinity for performance, yes, for security, not really).
  - Maledictus 7y ago
    That makes sense, thank you.
Jennie478 7y ago
Cute dog doing exercise like humans http://bit.ly/2Jq3rz1 http://bit.ly/2Jq3rz1 Funny gorilla acting like humans see his video on link below http://bit.ly/2JmTNxr http://bit.ly/2JmTNxr Best way to get rid from dark spots on face just follow this https://zoomtips.blogspot.com/2019/05/Dark-spots.html https://zoomtips.blogspot.com/2019/05/Dark-spots.html Funny panda is playing with friends they are sho cute http://bit.ly/2JvDQF4 http://bit.ly/2JvDQF4
pilmihilmipilmi 7y ago
Is there an option to turn off all mitigations? A public hoster is different to my local build server where security is not an issue and only performance counts.
- jasonhansel 7y ago
  I believe there are some Linux kernel parameters to tune things.
- sebazzz 7y ago
  Part of the mitigations is a microcode update, which may be embedded in your computers firmware (BIOS/UEFI). You could of course _not_ update your server firmware, but it could make you vulnerable to all kinds of security issues.
- quantummkv 7y ago
  Linux 5.2 is supposedly introducing a flag that does exactly what you want. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Spectre-Meltdown-Easy-Switch-52 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Spectre-...
wiradikusuma 7y ago
Since we're also talking about CPU in general here.. I'm building a PC, initially wanted to use Intel because of hackintosh. But I don't think it's justified to have an already expensive CPU (Intel is more expensive than AMD) gets throttled down again due to patches. So now I'm considering AMD. What would you recommend for developer? I will use it for Android, Docker and occasionally gaming. (I'm aware that I most likely won't have hackintosh due to AMD)
- ignaloidas 7y ago
  You can still run MacOS in VM even when using AMD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATnpEOo3GJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATnpEOo3GJA
- noir_lord 7y ago
  I have a 2700X and it's a monster for the money. That said the Zen 2 (3rd generation) is out a in a few months so depending on urgency you may want to wait for the 3xxx series. They moved to 7nm and the IPC bump is supposed to be decent.
- qalmakka 7y ago
  You can find brand new Ryzen 7 2700X (8 cores) for very reasonable prices after the last price cuts (we're a few months away from the 7nm ryzen 3rd gen). If it's still too much a Ryzen 5 2600(X) (6 cores) is still a very good processor for almost any use case. About hackintosh and AMD, that's is not only possible, but also not too complicated to achieve on Mojave (see https://vanilla.amd-osx.com/ https://vanilla.amd-osx.com/ for more details). Older versions required using custom AMD kernels, but some guy figured out how to patch the vanilla kernel for Ryzen and Bulldozer straight from Clover; it's not as simple as using Intel, but it's much easier than it was a few years back.
- alexozer 7y ago
  I'm also building a computer and just purchased an i7 9700K for $400. I also wonder what the equivalent-performance AMD processor would be given the performance loss of these patches. Unfortunately it's a bit late to back out without returning the motherboard as well, though.

218 points by Boulth 7y ago

What kind of performance penalty do all of these patches combined have on intel chips? I’m curious how much slower an intel chip is now versus before meltdown.

the8472 7y ago
There's no single number since it depends on your workload. Something that is syscall- and interrupt-heavy or does lots of task-switching will see far more overhead than pure number-crunching with properly allocated threads. Synthetic benchmarks can get you a penalty from anywhere from 1.001x and beyond 2x. Your workload also influences which mitigations you can safely turn off. If you're running a single-tenant system and don't need isolated security domains then you can turn them off. Future software improvements (io_uring!) may also recover some of those losses.
- cookiecaper 7y ago
  >If you're running a single-tenant system and don't need isolated security domains then you can turn them off. This is the dirty secret that no one will let out because its ramifications on "the cloud" are very serious, and Microsoft, Amazon, et al have staked their futures on rent-seeking via cloud. These hardware bugs make the risks of multi-tenancy incontrovertible, and I would expect enterprise security departments to be clamoring for the return of hardware control. My popcorn is out to watch as the frantic inquisition against cloud heretics kicks into high[er] gear.
  - kccqzy 7y ago
    What? Single-tenancy and the cloud are pretty orthogonal. I can request single-tenant machines on EC2; they just cost more. But I still have the benefit of being able to create and delete an instance in just minutes.
    - cookiecaper 7y ago
      Multi-tenant is the cloud's linchpin and it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise. The offerings of and outlook for cloud providers would be very different without multi-tenancy. While single-tenant options may be available for some configurations, you'll pay through the nose, and there are many limitations (e.g., EBS-backed volumes attached to your single-tenant instances still run on multi-tenant hosts). Moreover, few if any of the managed cloud services, which are what really drive cloud adoption, have any concept of single tenancy. Even after all this, the risk is only partially mitigated, because you're trusting Amazon's management toolkit and staff to respect these boundaries and to not have any bugs that may inadvertently expose access or data to third parties. Considering single-tenancy is such a small segment of their business, I doubt this is a major consideration, and even if it is, it's a lot of eggs to put into a basket that's completely out of your control. There just isn't much of an argument for a group that's serious about security to commit hardcore to "the cloud", yet virtually every company I've encountered in the last few years is pushing this hard, and actively ostracizing anyone who tries to inject some moderation or sanity into it. I appreciate the convenience of cloud offerings as much as the next guy, but it's out of control, and the complete disregard for the implications of hardware bugs that fundamentally undermine the supposed security model is a great representation of that.
- mort96 7y ago
  I don't know that there are many computers out there which don't need isolated security domains. Users run javascript all the time, cloud servers obviously need security domains, regular bare metal servers generally run internet-facing applications such as web servers as unprivileged users in case they contain RCE bugs.
  - kccqzy 7y ago
    High performance computing, machine learning training servers, CI/CD build servers, most database servers, home media servers, computers for industrial control, etc.
citilife 7y ago
It looks like there is generally a 18% - 40% performance hit with meltdown[1]: > On Linux distributions like Ubuntu 18.10 and Clear Linux the mitigation costs were about ~18% while both RHEL 8 Beta and openSUSE 15.0 had a nearly 40% hit. If we look at MDS mitigation for older MACs[2], it could be 40%: > Intel MDS Vulnerabilities Affecting 7th Gen And Below May Slow Macs By Up To 40%, Apple Warns If we look at MDS mitigation generally (if Intel is to be believed) we are looking at ~10% for most use cases[3] > Intel's benchmarks show a 6-14 percent drop in storage performance on a couple of Xeon processors, both with Hyper Threading enabled. Assuming that Intel is not showing a worst case scenario in any of these benchmarks, the hit to storage could be even bigger. > It's in workstations and data centers that mitigations are likely to have the biggest performance impact, depending on the workload. In a separate graph, for example, Intel shows a 19 percent drop in "server side Java" performance after disabling Hyper Threading on a Xeon Platinum 8180 processor (compared to having it turned on). In other words... total I have no idea what we'll be seeing. However, if we don't look at just "raw performance" in benchmarks when buying CPUs, AMD is likely a better purchase for most use cases at this point. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=spec-melt-8way&num=2 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=spec-mel... [2] https://wccftech.com/intel-mds-vulnerabilities-affecting-7th-gen-and-below-may-slow-macs-by-up-to-40-apple-warns/ https://wccftech.com/intel-mds-vulnerabilities-affecting-7th... [3] https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-posts-benchmarks-showing-performance-impact-of-new-cpu-flaws/ https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-posts-benchmarks-showing-perfo...
- the8472 7y ago
  Phoronix just released new benchmarks covering MDS mitigations and the combined costs of all mitigations . https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=mds-zombieload-mit&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=mds-zomb...
  - nullwasamistake 7y ago
    For the lazy: "If looking at the geometric mean for the tests run today, the Intel systems all saw about 16% lower performance out-of-the-box now with these default mitigations and obviously even lower if disabling Hyper Threading for maximum security. The two AMD systems tested saw a 3% performance hit with the default mitigations. While there are minor differences between the systems to consider, the mitigation impact is enough to draw the Core i7 8700K much closer to the Ryzen 7 2700X and the Core i9 7980XE to the Threadripper 2990WX." Not looking good for Intel at the moment. It should also be noted that there's believable rumors that the mitigations are not fully effective unless hyperthreading is disabled.
bArray 7y ago
I would be very interested to see those numbers arrogated, I have no idea whether these numbers are percentages of 100% original CPU performance or percentages of the remaining performance from the last bug. Either way, that's some serious performance loss. Even your normal light-weight users are going to start noticing slowdown. It appears as if nobody at Intel is doing anything other than cursory security analysis of processors. So far the cost has been performance, but I imagine there may be some bugs without micro-code mitigation. Not only this but it appears to be only a matter of time until Intel ME is broken too.
- writelikeaYou 7y ago
  Why do you write like a moron? Use normal language instead of coming across like a piece of skit. You think it looks great but it looks like skit. And I am way more intelligent than you. Drop all the imposter syndrome bullskits. It's for your own good. You look like a tediot. In all walks of life. Please readjust and reassess.

dontbenebby 7y ago

What's a good Linux friendly laptop which uses AMD?

klingonopera 7y ago
My 2 cents as someone looking to get a new (mid-range gaming) laptop this year: The new ones coming out currently and within the next few months. You'll find the amount of AMD Ryzen in mobiles has skyrocketed the last two years. We now have AMD Ryzen CPUs combined with nVidia dGPU solutions, unthinkable just a year ago. I'm still waiting for the Ryzen 3750Hs to hit the (German) market, but if I had to buy tomorrow, I'd presently opt for the Asus FX505DT-EB73. This one has an NV dGPU, there's also an arguably Linux friendlier AMD RX 560 of that laptop available, too. I personally would also prefer an AMD dGPU solution, but the RX 560/580 is already old and I don't think AMD has a solution anytime soon either, unfortunately...
- rl3 7y ago
  I'd say only go with NV GPU on Linux if you really need CUDA. Otherwise it's just pain, at least if you plan on using Wayland.
  - klingonopera 7y ago
    Yeah, if you even need dedicated GPUs at all, as usually it's Gamers who are looking for those and they're usually on Windows systems anyways (really looking forward to installing Windows 7 on the laptop I mentioned if I do get it this year - kinda mean that both ironic and not-ironic...). The built-in Radeon Vega 8 or 10 solutions on all mobile Ryzens are usually better and more efficient than current Intel counterparts, so if you don't need a dGPU, then that's one more reason to root for Team Green. EDIT: In case anyone reading isn't aware, nVidia is a biaaatch when it comes to drivers for Linux. Anyone looking for powerful GPUs in Linux machines, no matter desktop or laptop, has an easier life with AMD solutions. That's the reason there's an infamous photo of Linus showing the finger to nVidia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpOyKCNZYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpOyKCNZYw

beenBoutIT 7y ago

When the AMD equivalent of MDS is made known and given an acronym it will be an acronym that Intel is immune to.

rossdavidh 7y ago
While it is no doubt true that there are likely some vulnerabilities in AMD's chips that don't exist in Intel's, it is also true that because Intel has a larger market share, that's where most of the work is going to be done to find vulnerabilities, by the bad guys as well as security researchers. Much like how Microsoft Windows used to have a lot more security problems than any other OS, because they had >90% market share, so no one bothered to develop malware for anything else. Monocultures invite epidemics.
- sam0x17 7y ago
  In this particular area though, it works both ways. Intel has so many researchers and resources, they are able to pursue tons of speculative execution / CPU doing something you wouldn't imagine it normally does experiments, and many of these find their way into their CPUs. A company with less resources might have less vulnerabilities of this nature simply because they don't have the resources to focus on that stuff in the first place. Just a theory.
- alexozer 7y ago
  I'm not exactly sure the monoculture argument is valid for Windows vs. Linux though; Linux still dominated server usage while Windows was attacked more often, despite the fact that you could potentially reap a much greater reward infecting a server. Unix-based OSs were just inherently more secure for the most part.
  - rossdavidh 7y ago
    While it's certainly true that Linux does much better on servers than laptop/desktops, I don't think it ever got to the >90% market share that Windows had on laptop/desktop (although admittedly that depends on whose estimates you look at). But servers certainly do differ in regards monoculture in important ways, relative to laptop/desktop. It's also possibly significant that Linux on servers is split between Redhat and Ubuntu and others, who have some non-trivial differences in regards to security updates, etc. None of which means that Unix-based OS's don't have inherent advantages in regards to security, just that not having a monoculture target on their forehead also helps.

Maledictus 7y ago

I don't understand why hyperthreading needs to be turned off for maximum security? Wouldn't restricting it to only allow simultaneous threads that are part of the same process be enough?

boulos 7y ago
While that definitely restricts the attack surface, there are still situations where you are running untrusted code within a process (e.g., JITed code whether JavaScript or something else like eBPF). So it would require not only the kernel scheduler to be careful about scheduling threads to cores, but these applications as well (which is not something most people have ever bothered with, setting thread affinity for performance, yes, for security, not really).
- Maledictus 7y ago
  That makes sense, thank you.

Jennie478 7y ago

Cute dog doing exercise like humans http://bit.ly/2Jq3rz1 http://bit.ly/2Jq3rz1 Funny gorilla acting like humans see his video on link below http://bit.ly/2JmTNxr http://bit.ly/2JmTNxr Best way to get rid from dark spots on face just follow this https://zoomtips.blogspot.com/2019/05/Dark-spots.html https://zoomtips.blogspot.com/2019/05/Dark-spots.html Funny panda is playing with friends they are sho cute http://bit.ly/2JvDQF4 http://bit.ly/2JvDQF4

pilmihilmipilmi 7y ago

Is there an option to turn off all mitigations? A public hoster is different to my local build server where security is not an issue and only performance counts.

jasonhansel 7y ago
I believe there are some Linux kernel parameters to tune things.
sebazzz 7y ago
Part of the mitigations is a microcode update, which may be embedded in your computers firmware (BIOS/UEFI). You could of course _not_ update your server firmware, but it could make you vulnerable to all kinds of security issues.
quantummkv 7y ago
Linux 5.2 is supposedly introducing a flag that does exactly what you want. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Spectre-Meltdown-Easy-Switch-52 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Spectre-...

wiradikusuma 7y ago

Since we're also talking about CPU in general here.. I'm building a PC, initially wanted to use Intel because of hackintosh. But I don't think it's justified to have an already expensive CPU (Intel is more expensive than AMD) gets throttled down again due to patches. So now I'm considering AMD. What would you recommend for developer? I will use it for Android, Docker and occasionally gaming. (I'm aware that I most likely won't have hackintosh due to AMD)

ignaloidas 7y ago
You can still run MacOS in VM even when using AMD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATnpEOo3GJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATnpEOo3GJA
noir_lord 7y ago
I have a 2700X and it's a monster for the money. That said the Zen 2 (3rd generation) is out a in a few months so depending on urgency you may want to wait for the 3xxx series. They moved to 7nm and the IPC bump is supposed to be decent.
qalmakka 7y ago
You can find brand new Ryzen 7 2700X (8 cores) for very reasonable prices after the last price cuts (we're a few months away from the 7nm ryzen 3rd gen). If it's still too much a Ryzen 5 2600(X) (6 cores) is still a very good processor for almost any use case. About hackintosh and AMD, that's is not only possible, but also not too complicated to achieve on Mojave (see https://vanilla.amd-osx.com/ https://vanilla.amd-osx.com/ for more details). Older versions required using custom AMD kernels, but some guy figured out how to patch the vanilla kernel for Ryzen and Bulldozer straight from Clover; it's not as simple as using Intel, but it's much easier than it was a few years back.
alexozer 7y ago
I'm also building a computer and just purchased an i7 9700K for $400. I also wonder what the equivalent-performance AMD processor would be given the performance loss of these patches. Unfortunately it's a bit late to back out without returning the motherboard as well, though.