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That’s highly misleading, and the very careful way that you worded your reply tells me that you know this. Why the obfuscation?

Gabrielfair 7y ago
I am a phd researcher studying linguistics and deception. You mentioned the op was being misleading and communicated an understanding of the op's subversive intentions. Could you help me understand how op was being deceptive and how you knew based on their choice of language? If you don't want to comment publicly and are still interested in helping me you can reach me at: gfair @ uncc.edu
- jdsully 7y ago
  I'm not OP but it comes from the fact that Spectre is a very specific bug, but is colloquially used to refer to all speculative execution bugs found after as well. So its true that AMD is susceptible to Spectre; However, the mitigations have a much lower effect on performance. Additionally AMD is not susceptible to the multitude of additional speculative execution bugs found in the time since Spectre was first announced.
  - IshKebab 7y ago
    Spectre was used to refer to all speculative execution timing leaks from the very beginning. That's why they called it "Spectre" - because it's going to be hanging over us for a long time.
IshKebab 7y ago
I wasn't obfuscating anything. Spectre is a fundamental flaw that affects Intel and AMD processors. Speculative execution is not really a "shortcut". Intel did make one shortcut but that resulted in Meltdown, which is easy to fix (conceptually anyway - I'm sure it was a lot of work!) Any idea why I've been downvoted so much for saying something that surely everyone here remembers (wasn't that long ago) and is easily verified on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerabil... > As of 2018, almost every computer system is affected by Spectre, including desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. Specifically, Spectre has been shown to work on Intel, AMD, ARM-based, and IBM processors.
- codeflo 7y ago
  Given that others also asked, I'll give a rundown of the discussion: The context of the discussion was cpuguy83's suggestion that compared to AMD, Intel has been "suffering from shortcuts leading to Spectre/Meltdown and the performance regressions due to patching those". cpuguy83's comment was very concise, so let me elaborate that the distinction between Spectre and Meltdown is essential here. Both are security flaws in CPUs that were published at the same time. Spectre is an industry-wide problem that also hit AMD, but "Meltdown" is the result of an Intel-specific implementation choice that I think one might fairly describe as a "shortcut". (Even IshKebab later agrees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21342048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21342048) Meltdown was also more immediately dangerous, and the software workarounds that were necessary to mitigate it in existing CPUs cost a lot of performance. Given this context, I'll quote the relevant item from cpuguy83 again and then IshKebab's reply: > cpuguy83: Intel [... has been ...] suffering from shortcuts leading to Spectre/Meltdown and the performance regressions due to patching those. > IshKebab: AMD chips suffer from Spectre too (which is the hard to fix issue). They didn't really take any fewer "shortcuts" than Intel. And they weren't "shortcuts". Note how IshKebab carefully ignores the Meltdown part of cpuguy83's comment to be able to claim that Intel hasn't been doing any worse than AMD, and that there were no shortcuts. For Spectre in the stricter sense, that's technically true. It's not true in the context of the entire Spectre/Meltdown event, which was cpuguy83's argument.

Gabrielfair 7y ago

I am a phd researcher studying linguistics and deception. You mentioned the op was being misleading and communicated an understanding of the op's subversive intentions. Could you help me understand how op was being deceptive and how you knew based on their choice of language? If you don't want to comment publicly and are still interested in helping me you can reach me at: gfair @ uncc.edu

jdsully 7y ago
I'm not OP but it comes from the fact that Spectre is a very specific bug, but is colloquially used to refer to all speculative execution bugs found after as well. So its true that AMD is susceptible to Spectre; However, the mitigations have a much lower effect on performance. Additionally AMD is not susceptible to the multitude of additional speculative execution bugs found in the time since Spectre was first announced.
- IshKebab 7y ago
  Spectre was used to refer to all speculative execution timing leaks from the very beginning. That's why they called it "Spectre" - because it's going to be hanging over us for a long time.

IshKebab 7y ago

I wasn't obfuscating anything. Spectre is a fundamental flaw that affects Intel and AMD processors. Speculative execution is not really a "shortcut". Intel did make one shortcut but that resulted in Meltdown, which is easy to fix (conceptually anyway - I'm sure it was a lot of work!) Any idea why I've been downvoted so much for saying something that surely everyone here remembers (wasn't that long ago) and is easily verified on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerabil... > As of 2018, almost every computer system is affected by Spectre, including desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. Specifically, Spectre has been shown to work on Intel, AMD, ARM-based, and IBM processors.

codeflo 7y ago
Given that others also asked, I'll give a rundown of the discussion: The context of the discussion was cpuguy83's suggestion that compared to AMD, Intel has been "suffering from shortcuts leading to Spectre/Meltdown and the performance regressions due to patching those". cpuguy83's comment was very concise, so let me elaborate that the distinction between Spectre and Meltdown is essential here. Both are security flaws in CPUs that were published at the same time. Spectre is an industry-wide problem that also hit AMD, but "Meltdown" is the result of an Intel-specific implementation choice that I think one might fairly describe as a "shortcut". (Even IshKebab later agrees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21342048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21342048) Meltdown was also more immediately dangerous, and the software workarounds that were necessary to mitigate it in existing CPUs cost a lot of performance. Given this context, I'll quote the relevant item from cpuguy83 again and then IshKebab's reply: > cpuguy83: Intel [... has been ...] suffering from shortcuts leading to Spectre/Meltdown and the performance regressions due to patching those. > IshKebab: AMD chips suffer from Spectre too (which is the hard to fix issue). They didn't really take any fewer "shortcuts" than Intel. And they weren't "shortcuts". Note how IshKebab carefully ignores the Meltdown part of cpuguy83's comment to be able to claim that Intel hasn't been doing any worse than AMD, and that there were no shortcuts. For Spectre in the stricter sense, that's technically true. It's not true in the context of the entire Spectre/Meltdown event, which was cpuguy83's argument.