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All these mitigations should really be disablable. I have a computer which is not connected to the Internet I use to run number-crunching tasks and play relativ
by qwerty456127 5y ago
All these mitigations should really be disablable. I have a computer which is not connected to the Internet I use to run number-crunching tasks and play relatively-old single-player games, but I still update it periodically. Obviously I don't need any such performance-killing mitigations there.
- yvdriess 5y agoYou can, to some extent. One of the side notes in the article addresses this point, the microcode version can be held back to an earlier version.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Laforet 5y agoStaying on an earlier version is not ideal as some of the later microcode updates actually contain useful errata beyond performance-limiting mitigations. Really wish Windows had an option like "mitigations=off" in Linux.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- zamadatix 5y ago"mitigitations=off" doesn't disable microcode mitigations like the one in this article.
- Laforet 5y agoYes, I assume the kernel has a predetermined list of microcode to be disabled when the flag is set. The same should be doable in Windows right now but the process seems quite tedious.
- quotemstr 5y agoBetter yet, the microcode should be open source and programmable just like the macrocode.
- amelius 5y agoI don't think that's necessary. But I do think software engineers should agree that updates should always be reversible. And security updates should always be backported yet still reversible.
- qwerty456127 5y ago> security updates should always be backported This means getting security updates without feature updates, doesn't it? But this time we want feature updates without a security update.
- Wowfunhappy 5y agoI'd consider the microcode fix to be a security update, not a feature update.
- iudqnolq 5y agoYep, and they don't want the fix. Hence needing feature but not security.
- marcyb5st 5y agoProbably you're on Win as you mentioned gaming. In Linux you can pass `mitigations=off` as a kernel boot time switch [1]. I did it on my old PC at home and it felt a bit snappier after that. However, I don't have any numbers to quantify it. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Spectre-Meltdown-Easy-Switch-52#:~:text=The%20mitigations%3Doff%20switch%20will,%2C%20POWER%2C%20and%20s390%20architectures https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Spectre-....
- BeeOnRope 5y agomitigations=off doesn't disable this effect.
- darig 5y agomitigations=off does disable this effect.
- fouric 5y agoA citation or some kind of further explanation would be more valuable than an effective "no it doesn't" response.
- Chyzwar 5y agoIt disables kernel mitigation, not microcode mitigations.
- BeeOnRope 5y agoSorry, I explained it more detail elsewhere in this comments section. mitigations=off works at the OS kernel level to patch out some expensive aspects of what the kernel can do (possibly in concert with the CPU but driven by the kernel). This issue a microcode change that affects the CPU behavior without any intervention by the kernel, so mitigations=off doesn't help.
- Wowfunhappy 5y agoDo the microcode changed alone, without kernel mitigations, negatively impact performance?
- globular-toast 5y agoIt took me a surprisingly long time to understand the word "disablable". The spelling "disableable" is slightly better but still not a very nice word. The Linux kernel mitigations can be disabled easily. But with microcode this is the problem with having it as an opaque blob. You have no idea what's in that update. Maybe it's good for you, maybe it's bad.
- Causality1 5y agoIt's amazing to me what people will put up with to avoid an attack vector that doesn't have a single known victim. I don't run untrusted programs or Javascript. I see no reason to install any of these measures on my personal desktop until people actually start being victimized by them.
- cheschire 5y agoHere's a tool for windows. https://www.grc.com/inspectre.htm https://www.grc.com/inspectre.htm