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By the time you subtract all the sub-prime performance from their vulnerabilities, this isn't actually true on properly patched operating systems. They took a

by kev009 6y ago

By the time you subtract all the sub-prime performance from their vulnerabilities, this isn't actually true on properly patched operating systems. They took a sub-prime loan on validation, sacrificing security in the process, and the result is chips marketed and sold as something they are not. There really should be government-level lawsuit and restructuring at intel right now.

bredren 6y ago
I looked for but couldn’t find recent benchmarks showing performance degradation on windows and macOS related to mitigating Spectre and Zombieload / Z2. Can you point at recent information on this?
Filligree 6y ago
It's worse, isn't it? From what I've heard, Intel likes to run their benchmarks with many (most?) mitigations disabled... but Windows ships with all of them enabled.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
013a 6y ago
Any modern (ie 2020) third-party benchmarks ran against these processors have the vulnerability patches applied. They're factored in. Yes, Intel will often cite performance characteristics without the patches applied, and shame on them for that. And, Yes, it would be interesting to know how much of Intel's performance lead pre-Ryzen was due to this bad speculative execution microcode; it seems likely that AMD wasn't as far behind as everyone thought, but the past is the past. But the debt is now paid, and Intel still leads in single-core performance. Really, they've never not led in single-core performance (maybe going back to the late-90s Athlon days they were trailing). That's something an Intel shill would tell you, but it's also something anyone can find out just by looking at the benchmarks or doing their own testing. Marketing is mostly lies, but those lies stop when I hold the silicon in my hands.
coreblocks 6y ago
I have a feeling we will see a bunch of AMD vulnerabilities revealed in the coming years. Researchers haven’t really had time to study AMD’s micro architecture yet and it was not really a priority because of low penetration in the server market. In theory intel should have less bugs since they have massive design verification teams.
- thu2111 6y ago
  Yes, the idea AMD is more secure than Intel is mostly a myth. AMD was less aggressively optimised than Intel but AMD didn't know about side channel attacks either and would have eventually ended up with the same techniques. Meanwhile, we can compare the security track record of SEV vs SGX to see some real meat. SEV has been cracked completely and repeatedly by simple C or cryptography programming errors like buffer overflows or not checking for points being on the curve. SGX has had no such errors, every single attack on it has been an exotic statistical side channel attack. The last round weren't even practical. Researchers studied it for a year and couldn't actually make it work against real enclaves, but Intel issued CVEs and mitigations for it anyway, just in case. And the root level of SGX was never cracked, which is why it's always been software patchable/renewable without needing new silicon. AMD SEV has needed new silicon more than once. SGX has held up pretty well given it was born just before the discovery of an entire class of CPU design vulnerabilities.

by kev009 6y ago

bredren 6y ago

I looked for but couldn’t find recent benchmarks showing performance degradation on windows and macOS related to mitigating Spectre and Zombieload / Z2. Can you point at recent information on this?

Filligree 6y ago

It's worse, isn't it? From what I've heard, Intel likes to run their benchmarks with many (most?) mitigations disabled... but Windows ships with all of them enabled.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

013a 6y ago

Any modern (ie 2020) third-party benchmarks ran against these processors have the vulnerability patches applied. They're factored in. Yes, Intel will often cite performance characteristics without the patches applied, and shame on them for that. And, Yes, it would be interesting to know how much of Intel's performance lead pre-Ryzen was due to this bad speculative execution microcode; it seems likely that AMD wasn't as far behind as everyone thought, but the past is the past. But the debt is now paid, and Intel still leads in single-core performance. Really, they've never not led in single-core performance (maybe going back to the late-90s Athlon days they were trailing). That's something an Intel shill would tell you, but it's also something anyone can find out just by looking at the benchmarks or doing their own testing. Marketing is mostly lies, but those lies stop when I hold the silicon in my hands.

coreblocks 6y ago

I have a feeling we will see a bunch of AMD vulnerabilities revealed in the coming years. Researchers haven’t really had time to study AMD’s micro architecture yet and it was not really a priority because of low penetration in the server market. In theory intel should have less bugs since they have massive design verification teams.

thu2111 6y ago
Yes, the idea AMD is more secure than Intel is mostly a myth. AMD was less aggressively optimised than Intel but AMD didn't know about side channel attacks either and would have eventually ended up with the same techniques. Meanwhile, we can compare the security track record of SEV vs SGX to see some real meat. SEV has been cracked completely and repeatedly by simple C or cryptography programming errors like buffer overflows or not checking for points being on the curve. SGX has had no such errors, every single attack on it has been an exotic statistical side channel attack. The last round weren't even practical. Researchers studied it for a year and couldn't actually make it work against real enclaves, but Intel issued CVEs and mitigations for it anyway, just in case. And the root level of SGX was never cracked, which is why it's always been software patchable/renewable without needing new silicon. AMD SEV has needed new silicon more than once. SGX has held up pretty well given it was born just before the discovery of an entire class of CPU design vulnerabilities.