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I noticed yesterday's articles about Intel's upcoming unusually large release of security mitigations. Under serious competitive threat for the first time in a

I noticed yesterday's articles about Intel's upcoming unusually large release of security mitigations. Under serious competitive threat for the first time in a while, I'm curious if Intel may have slowed the release of some mitigations to land after this round of comparison benchmarks.

Someone1234 7y ago
That's an interesting idea I didn't consider. edit: Below is wrong, see author of article's reply below for why. Preserving for record. They have been holding back review samples of their latest i9s so reviewers wouldn't do head-to-heads with this new 3950X (but people have anyway, and the 3950X crushes the i9). See Linus Tech Tip's review of the 3950X this morning for citation.
- neogodless 7y ago
  https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1123580-intel-could-take-years-to-catch-up%E2%80%A6-ryzen-9-3950x-review/ https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1123580-intel-could-tak... For those of you without really good search engines :) (Contains link to YouTube video review.)
- IanCutress 7y ago
  The new 18-core i9-10980XE isn't out yet, and review embargoes haven't been lifted. We know it's a slightly clock bumped version of the i9-9980XE, which was included in the AnandTech review and not the Linus review. Linus tested the 8-core i9-9900KS, which came out a few weeks ago, and those results are also in the link which is the title to this thread.
  - greatpatton 7y ago
    Yet the main question remain if the benchmark were done with the latest mitigation (and version of the microcode) or without...
    - IanCutress 7y ago
      No, I didn't have time to run 30hr+ of tests on 7-10 Intel CPUs with only 24 hours notice from the announcement yesterday
      - washadjeffmad 7y ago
        That would be responsible to mention in the review, with a promise to publish new comparisons whenever new mitigations are released. Intel's security flaws pushed our LCRs up at least two years and cost us extra in over-provisioning to account for real and potential performance loss. If Intel isn't actually hardware mitigating (as in, making no effort to redesign their chips with security in mind and instead playing whack a mole with vulnerabilities as they're discovered) and reviewers are not highlighting and disclosing this, they're lying by omission. I'm not being rude, but don't give Intel a pass here because of any prior fondness you might have held for them. Every benchmark of an Intel CPU you've ever published was made false by their negligence. That's a big, confusing problem for consumers, and they rely on your clarity and diligence to bring it to their attention and correct.
        swinglock 7y ago
        How much does performance degrade an average year for Intel and AMD? To a consumer a desktop CPU is an investment lasting for 3-8 years. Attempting to factor in predicted degradation of performance results based on history would be interesting and I think the right thing to do.
  - mrandish 7y ago
    Ian, What are your thoughts on the question of whether Intel may be strategically timing releases of some mitigations to favor their performance in review benchmarks?
    - IanCutress 7y ago
      This decision was likely made from a different department, and just lucked out that it was the day before an AMD launch. If Intel wanted to delay it specifically to appear for better benchmarks, they would have waited until after Cascade Lake-X benchmarks were out. It's meant to be being launched later this month.
  - NicoJuicy 7y ago
    Those results are not valid anymore. Better phrased: won't be valid for long, if the security patches are released ;)
agumonkey 7y ago
In a similar vein, some local supermarket catalog showed half laptops based on ryzen, the only intel I saw were ultra cheap atom x5.
- velox_io 7y ago
  Wow, I didn't expect that. Laptops were the only market Intel was still strong, still dominated. Having brought an rx5700 XT recently, the power usage has been just as impressive as the performance. AMD will have some very nice products when they start putting mini RX5000s in their CPUs. Decent performance without discrete GPUs is a real possibility. (Just need add some HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) to the mix and things will get rather interesting!)
  - nolok 7y ago
    You will probably still see mostly intel in expensive (>1000€) gaming laptop but everything else the power consumption of AMD new chips alone should give them the reign until intel can react.
    - lostlogin 7y ago
      ... Until Apple leave Intel. It’s been the eternal rumour but it doesn’t show any sign of dying.
      - NicoJuicy 7y ago
        Well, Apple has never been about performance/$ though. It's the "total package" ;)
      - nolok 7y ago
        My comment talks about specialized gaming laptop series (MSI G-series, ASUS Republic Of Gamers, HP Omen, Acer Predator).
    - what-the-grump 7y ago
      Until AMD releases stable drivers and gains market share, we'll just sit on the porch and buy cheap Intel. Fleet of BSODing machines because we decided to buy workstation graphics from AMD, I thought they would have figured out drivers by now. The knee jerk reaction to go and because they finally got closer to closing the gap with Intel is funny to watch but not very forward thinking.
NicoJuicy 7y ago
Probably, since they have known it for 6 months ( according to the researchers) I suppose, if you get this bad in the news and excepting it. This is kinda weird: https://twitter.com/gchip/status/1187519015544967168 https://twitter.com/gchip/status/1187519015544967168
starpilot 7y ago
Intel is part of the deep state.
- moonbug 7y ago
  If that's so, they're helping Make AMD Great Again.
  - starpilot 7y ago
    AMD was never great.
    - wolf550e 7y ago
      Against the Pentium 4, AMD was amazing.
    - rasz 7y ago
      AMD had three great moments before Ryzen. 1991. Am386DX-40 introduced at $200, quickly discounted to <$90 against Intels slower ~$200 386DX-33 and $258 486SX-20. With this one CPU AMD won the budget segment for a couple of years https://redhill.net.au/c/c-4.html#dx40 https://redhill.net.au/c/c-4.html#dx40 Intel replied by suing AMD, they lost the case. 2000. Duron/Athlon and first desktop 1GHz CPU. Intel replied by faking release of Pentium 3 1GHz, (only limited review samples, no stock shipped) followed by real release of 1.13GHz Pentium 3 dubbed the "Fastest x86 CPU in the world", except they crashed in users computers and resulted in expensive recall and delays https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/revisiting-intel,221-2.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/revisiting-intel,221-2.... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/08/28/intel_recalls_1_13ghz_pentium/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/08/28/intel_recalls_1_13g... 2003. AMD64, first desktop 64bit cpu starting at $218, half the price of comparable Pentium 4. Intel replied by directly bribing, intimidating and blackmailing distributors/retailers, resulting in biggest EU antitrust fine at the time of over $1.3 Billion. Intel hasnt paid a dime of this fine to this date! and keeps throwing lawyers at the problem and appealing. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/09/06/victory-intel-eu-court-orders-11bn-fine-re-examined/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/09/06/victory-in...
NicoJuicy 7y ago
Intel has been cheating their single core performance against AMD for many years, thanks to predictive and insecure algorithms. Reality is just catching up, AMD is already number one for a long time. Intell's cheating just didn't make it clear. I've waited for a year to express my opinion, before I could see any evidence. The time has come that AMD is even beating Intell's fake single core performance, so slowly we will see all of Intell's shit appear. There is no point in hiding it anymore for the consumer/gaming market, if they are not nr 1 in single core. Not if they lose trust of their business clients and profitable server market. All those gamers that bought Intel for single core performance and OEM's that stick to Intell because of monopolies betted on the wrong horse. https://twitter.com/damageboy/status/1194751035136450560?s=19 https://twitter.com/damageboy/status/1194751035136450560?s=1... This feels "nice", although I'm affected to :( Waiting for decent AMD laptops... Ps. Long AMD, ever since Spectre and meltdown.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  Well, maybe. Probably so, in part, but intel makes large dies rather than AMD's style of multiple smaller dies, which means signals have less far to go (and possibly don't have to be boosted to get between mini-dies). Perhaps someone who knows about this stuff can comment. Edit: the mini-dies are chiplets/CCDs. Couldn't remember the name.
  - NicoJuicy 7y ago
    As I understood, they had to much hick-ups going to smaller dies because of internal issues. They plan to recover in the end of 2020, while temporarily leaving the market open for AMD. Accepting that made them willing to fix their security issues, which decrease performance. Since they have no product line in response to AMD for now, that was not an easy call for sure.
- benibela 7y ago
  >Ps. Long AMD So you recommend to buy AMD stock now? Or TSMC? Or is it already too late for that? The share price already went up from 28 to 38 since October

Someone1234 7y ago

That's an interesting idea I didn't consider. edit: Below is wrong, see author of article's reply below for why. Preserving for record. They have been holding back review samples of their latest i9s so reviewers wouldn't do head-to-heads with this new 3950X (but people have anyway, and the 3950X crushes the i9). See Linus Tech Tip's review of the 3950X this morning for citation.

neogodless 7y ago
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1123580-intel-could-take-years-to-catch-up%E2%80%A6-ryzen-9-3950x-review/ https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/1123580-intel-could-tak... For those of you without really good search engines :) (Contains link to YouTube video review.)
IanCutress 7y ago
The new 18-core i9-10980XE isn't out yet, and review embargoes haven't been lifted. We know it's a slightly clock bumped version of the i9-9980XE, which was included in the AnandTech review and not the Linus review. Linus tested the 8-core i9-9900KS, which came out a few weeks ago, and those results are also in the link which is the title to this thread.
- greatpatton 7y ago
  Yet the main question remain if the benchmark were done with the latest mitigation (and version of the microcode) or without...
  - IanCutress 7y ago
    No, I didn't have time to run 30hr+ of tests on 7-10 Intel CPUs with only 24 hours notice from the announcement yesterday
    - washadjeffmad 7y ago
      That would be responsible to mention in the review, with a promise to publish new comparisons whenever new mitigations are released. Intel's security flaws pushed our LCRs up at least two years and cost us extra in over-provisioning to account for real and potential performance loss. If Intel isn't actually hardware mitigating (as in, making no effort to redesign their chips with security in mind and instead playing whack a mole with vulnerabilities as they're discovered) and reviewers are not highlighting and disclosing this, they're lying by omission. I'm not being rude, but don't give Intel a pass here because of any prior fondness you might have held for them. Every benchmark of an Intel CPU you've ever published was made false by their negligence. That's a big, confusing problem for consumers, and they rely on your clarity and diligence to bring it to their attention and correct.
      - swinglock 7y ago
        How much does performance degrade an average year for Intel and AMD? To a consumer a desktop CPU is an investment lasting for 3-8 years. Attempting to factor in predicted degradation of performance results based on history would be interesting and I think the right thing to do.
- mrandish 7y ago
  Ian, What are your thoughts on the question of whether Intel may be strategically timing releases of some mitigations to favor their performance in review benchmarks?
  - IanCutress 7y ago
    This decision was likely made from a different department, and just lucked out that it was the day before an AMD launch. If Intel wanted to delay it specifically to appear for better benchmarks, they would have waited until after Cascade Lake-X benchmarks were out. It's meant to be being launched later this month.
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  Those results are not valid anymore. Better phrased: won't be valid for long, if the security patches are released ;)

agumonkey 7y ago

In a similar vein, some local supermarket catalog showed half laptops based on ryzen, the only intel I saw were ultra cheap atom x5.

velox_io 7y ago
Wow, I didn't expect that. Laptops were the only market Intel was still strong, still dominated. Having brought an rx5700 XT recently, the power usage has been just as impressive as the performance. AMD will have some very nice products when they start putting mini RX5000s in their CPUs. Decent performance without discrete GPUs is a real possibility. (Just need add some HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) to the mix and things will get rather interesting!)
- nolok 7y ago
  You will probably still see mostly intel in expensive (>1000€) gaming laptop but everything else the power consumption of AMD new chips alone should give them the reign until intel can react.
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    ... Until Apple leave Intel. It’s been the eternal rumour but it doesn’t show any sign of dying.
    - NicoJuicy 7y ago
      Well, Apple has never been about performance/$ though. It's the "total package" ;)
    - nolok 7y ago
      My comment talks about specialized gaming laptop series (MSI G-series, ASUS Republic Of Gamers, HP Omen, Acer Predator).
  - what-the-grump 7y ago
    Until AMD releases stable drivers and gains market share, we'll just sit on the porch and buy cheap Intel. Fleet of BSODing machines because we decided to buy workstation graphics from AMD, I thought they would have figured out drivers by now. The knee jerk reaction to go and because they finally got closer to closing the gap with Intel is funny to watch but not very forward thinking.

NicoJuicy 7y ago

Probably, since they have known it for 6 months ( according to the researchers) I suppose, if you get this bad in the news and excepting it. This is kinda weird: https://twitter.com/gchip/status/1187519015544967168 https://twitter.com/gchip/status/1187519015544967168

starpilot 7y ago

Intel is part of the deep state.

moonbug 7y ago
If that's so, they're helping Make AMD Great Again.
- starpilot 7y ago
  AMD was never great.
  - wolf550e 7y ago
    Against the Pentium 4, AMD was amazing.
  - rasz 7y ago
    AMD had three great moments before Ryzen. 1991. Am386DX-40 introduced at $200, quickly discounted to <$90 against Intels slower ~$200 386DX-33 and $258 486SX-20. With this one CPU AMD won the budget segment for a couple of years https://redhill.net.au/c/c-4.html#dx40 https://redhill.net.au/c/c-4.html#dx40 Intel replied by suing AMD, they lost the case. 2000. Duron/Athlon and first desktop 1GHz CPU. Intel replied by faking release of Pentium 3 1GHz, (only limited review samples, no stock shipped) followed by real release of 1.13GHz Pentium 3 dubbed the "Fastest x86 CPU in the world", except they crashed in users computers and resulted in expensive recall and delays https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/revisiting-intel,221-2.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/revisiting-intel,221-2.... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/08/28/intel_recalls_1_13ghz_pentium/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/08/28/intel_recalls_1_13g... 2003. AMD64, first desktop 64bit cpu starting at $218, half the price of comparable Pentium 4. Intel replied by directly bribing, intimidating and blackmailing distributors/retailers, resulting in biggest EU antitrust fine at the time of over $1.3 Billion. Intel hasnt paid a dime of this fine to this date! and keeps throwing lawyers at the problem and appealing. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/09/06/victory-intel-eu-court-orders-11bn-fine-re-examined/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/09/06/victory-in...

NicoJuicy 7y ago

Intel has been cheating their single core performance against AMD for many years, thanks to predictive and insecure algorithms. Reality is just catching up, AMD is already number one for a long time. Intell's cheating just didn't make it clear. I've waited for a year to express my opinion, before I could see any evidence. The time has come that AMD is even beating Intell's fake single core performance, so slowly we will see all of Intell's shit appear. There is no point in hiding it anymore for the consumer/gaming market, if they are not nr 1 in single core. Not if they lose trust of their business clients and profitable server market. All those gamers that bought Intel for single core performance and OEM's that stick to Intell because of monopolies betted on the wrong horse. https://twitter.com/damageboy/status/1194751035136450560?s=19 https://twitter.com/damageboy/status/1194751035136450560?s=1... This feels "nice", although I'm affected to :( Waiting for decent AMD laptops... Ps. Long AMD, ever since Spectre and meltdown.

tempguy9999 7y ago
Well, maybe. Probably so, in part, but intel makes large dies rather than AMD's style of multiple smaller dies, which means signals have less far to go (and possibly don't have to be boosted to get between mini-dies). Perhaps someone who knows about this stuff can comment. Edit: the mini-dies are chiplets/CCDs. Couldn't remember the name.
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  As I understood, they had to much hick-ups going to smaller dies because of internal issues. They plan to recover in the end of 2020, while temporarily leaving the market open for AMD. Accepting that made them willing to fix their security issues, which decrease performance. Since they have no product line in response to AMD for now, that was not an easy call for sure.
benibela 7y ago
>Ps. Long AMD So you recommend to buy AMD stock now? Or TSMC? Or is it already too late for that? The share price already went up from 28 to 38 since October