8 ms·

IIRC, it was due to spectre/meltdown [0], where a rather obscure design flaw in Intel CPUs of the time made it possible to slowly read the kernel memory space f

IIRC, it was due to spectre/meltdown [0], where a rather obscure design flaw in Intel CPUs of the time made it possible to slowly read the kernel memory space from an arbitrary process. Microsoft added software mitigations for it to Windows 10, but they came with a price of a ~20% slowdown. By the time of Windows 11, Intel fixed the issue in the newer processors, so instead of supporting both old CPUs (with slowdown) and new CPUs, Microsoft just scrapped the mitigations altogether and limited Windows 11 to new CPUs only. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerability) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerabili...

pgeorgi 3y ago
Would have been a fun exercise to get Intel and AMD to replace (or properly fix) their defective product, instead of just shrugging their shoulders and telling people to buy new cruft. Especially with win11 claiming to be eco-friendly in various places ("reduce CO2 footprint") it's somewhat annoying to force a hardware refresh cycle like that.
- eru 3y ago
  > Would have been a fun exercise to get Intel and AMD to replace (or properly fix) their defective product, instead of just shrugging their shoulders and telling people to buy new cruft. If people want extensive warranties like that on their electronics, they can already buy extensive warranties on their electronics. Why force everyone to pay for these things?
  - dislikedtom2 3y ago
    Because this planned obsolete stuff is slowly killing us and yielding would probably only make it worse?
    - eru 3y ago
      If you don't like it, don't buy it. Or do you just want to control what other people are doing?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - atoav 3y ago
        Gotcha, so you are also against electrical regulations like requirements to use tested insulators etc? Because some regulation is actually useful in a world where consumers cannot be expected to know everything and be able to test everything. And some assumptions about a product should hold true as well. E.g. the assumption should be that if I buy a desktop CPU today I should be able to use it for at least n years. Because how would you know this beforehand? If Intel made an optimization that turns out to be a security flaw, that is totally their fault and they should cover it. This is nothing any consumer could have known (and rherefore avoided buying) beforehand. This is the cost of taking risks in business. It seems to be a popular stance these days to shill for corporations and protect them from ever having their risks realized. But that makes the products and the world we live in worse for everybody and gives you nothing at all.
        eru 3y ago
        > And some assumptions about a product should hold true as well. E.g. the assumption should be that if I buy a desktop CPU today I should be able to use it for at least n years. Because how would you know this beforehand? You ask the manufacturer, duh? If they lie, that's fraud. If you don't like the answer, you don't buy. > If Intel made an optimization that turns out to be a security flaw, that is totally their fault and they should cover it. This is nothing any consumer could have known (and therefore avoided buying) beforehand. This is the cost of taking risks in business. Customers and suppliers should be able to allocate such risks between themselves however they like. You can fiddle with what the default should be, in case they haven't negotiated anything. But if both customer and supplier agree, the customer should be allowed to bear such a risk. > It seems to be a popular stance these days to shill for corporations and protect them from ever having their risks realized. Why? I have nothing against any particular allocation of the risks, as long as all involved parties agree. (Otherwise, they just don't make a deal.) > Gotcha, so you are also against electrical regulations like requirements to use tested insulators etc? If you claim they are tested, you better not lie. Otherwise it's fraud and you should be held liable. If a customer wants to buy untested insulators, who am I to keep them? I mean, in the most extreme case, a customer can buy bread and try to use it as an insulator, if they really want to. There's nothing the supplier can do about that.
    - Gigachad 3y ago
      Having a warranty on CPUs wouldn't have saved the environment. It probably would have made things worse as every user returned their computers for a new one.
  - contravariant 3y ago
    Protection against being sold a defective product is considered 'extensive warranty' now? You're free to argue that this isn't a big enough defect to make the transaction fraudulent, but don't try to argue you need to pay more money to get the most basic protection. I mean, if you're not even getting the most basic protection than what on earth are you paying taxes for?
    - eru 3y ago
      What do taxes have to do with anything here? If someone promises you that the product will do something or eg 'not be defective', they should stick to that promise or face prosecution for fraud or false advertising or similar. I pay my taxes to eg fund national defense or make sure that poor people get some welfare. I don't pay my taxes so that the government can decide how much warranty I need. (They do some of that anyway. But I'd rather they don't.)
- nearbuy 3y ago
  "Defective" seems harsh here in that every product will always have issues of this degree no matter how hard one tries to make a perfect product. We're talking about a very subtle side channel attack. I promise you every computer system today still has some undiscovered side channel vulnerabilities. Meltdown-like vulnerabilities most likely existed since speculative execution was invented, likely decades before researchers discovered it. To my knowledge, Meltdown has never been exploited in the wild. Lawmakers could make chip designers replace all the chips but, 1) that's not very environmental either 2) it would be pretty disastrous for everyone when Intel and AMD go under because they can't actually afford to replace every chip they had in existence at the time 3) assuming this was somehow done in a way they could afford, the costs for these replacements ultimately get passed on to customers. For replacements that were never necessary to begin with. It's just kind of wasteful.
  - pgeorgi 3y ago
    It seems defective and in need of replacement enough that Microsoft decided to not support these products in their operating system that would otherwise be well-enough supported by those chips. Right now, that argument seems to be simultaneously "It's critical enough for Microsoft to explicitly deny running Windows 11 on it" and "It's not critical enough that Intel and AMD should do something about it, except to sell more stuff." What kind of incentives does that create?
    - Drakim 3y ago
      It's the "too big to fail" scenario all over again. Just like with too big to fail companies and banks, only half of the equation is being applied: CPU industry wants to start using risky design techniques to get an edge on the competition? Who are we to tell them no? it's a free market. CPU industry can't afford to replace the defects that came about from their risky choices? They are too big and important to be held accountable.
      - nearbuy 3y ago
        You're going to have to go back to the 1990s if you want to undo the "risky design technique" of speculative execution. You're ignoring half the equation too here. There are benefits to having faster and more efficient computers for the past couple decades that could execute more instructions per clock cycle. These vulnerabilities are subtle, hard to predict, and can take years or decades to discover. Anything that makes computers faster is a risky design technique. If you want safe chips, you'd better say goodbye to caches, multithreading, and hyperthreading as well. You'll be left with a slow, inefficient chip. Non-American companies that aren't forced to take zero risks would take over the market and be miles ahead.
- tinus_hn 3y ago
  Specter and meltdown are part of a class of problems that exists in all processors Intel and AMD have in their lineup and the fixes are just papering over the published exploits. These problems can’t be fixed without large sacrifices in performance, perhaps it’ll happen in specialized products but it hasn’t happened yet.
  - pgeorgi 3y ago
    Intel/AMD Model N is affected and therefore banned for use with Windows 11. As per your assertion (that I agree with, btw) Intel/AMD Model N+1 is affected (just slightly less so) and can be used with Windows 11. So, either this is fixable, then it's on Intel/AMD to replace defective hardware (or offer a fix that is worth unlocking Windows 11 over, e.g. through microcode) or it's not fixable in which case, why prevent the older chips from running Windows 11 if they're in exactly the same situation? Either way, Microsoft's decision seems arbitrary, and puts the onus on their customers instead of the culprits, the chip vendors, who even get rewarded by encouraging new sales!
    - tinus_hn 3y ago
      It’s the third option, the publicized issues have been solved. The claim that this class of issues is the reason for Microsoft’s hardware requirements for Windows 11 is not mine.
andai 3y ago
>they came with a price of a ~20% slowdown. Would be nice if upgrading to a new version of Windows came with such a mild penalty!
Hawxy 3y ago
It's a whole list of reasons, not just this. I was finally able to find the interview with David Weston that goes over all of the requirements: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-11-understanding-the-system-requirements-and-the-security-benefits/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-11-understandin...
alerighi 3y ago
Spectre and Meltdown are two vulnerabilities unlikely to affect the normal home usage of a computer. Are surely a concern for computers that are employed in companies or where you have to manage sensitive data, but surely for the desktop user is not a concern. We are talking of very elaborate attacks that are not something you find everyday. It's something to the level that a government agency could do, not the random attaccker that only wants to encrypt your data and ask you for a payment. Beside that in most desktop settings is even useless, you don't even care about elevating privileges with a vulnerability, since most users work with the administrator account anyway (yes there is UAC to ask for privileges but let's face it, 99% of users always click yes because they are used like this). I usually disable mitigations on my personal computers and I'm not concerned about it.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  >Spectre and Meltdown are two vulnerabilities unlikely to affect the normal home usage of a computer. It was found to be exploitable via a website in your browser. This would have been dire for any kind of user unless they literally only used the computer for gaming and did no web browsing.
- andylynch 3y ago
  I saw some big fights about Infra guys insisting on enabling their mitigations for every device, including the most latency sensitive ones running only in-house software.
MikusR 3y ago
Whiskey lake (8th gen) is affected by spectre/meltdown, but is is fully supported by Windows 11. There are also a couple 7th gen cpus supported, that by pure coincidence are the ones used, in at that time latest, surface studio. There are also many unsupported cpus that even with ~20% slowdown are twice as fast as the supported ones.
temac 3y ago
That was absolutely not the rational they provided. Which was more a meaningless thing like: we got telemetry measures that show that modern computers are faster and crash less, so we are randomly requiring them.
nstart 3y ago
Speculation: Windows 10 end of life's in 2025. It's entirely possible that by the time that year rolls around, they throw in some backwards compatibility with some asterisks around performance. Right now, Microsoft is not officially supporting the older processors but Windows 11 runs on 7th gen intel processors without any real issues except that it's a little slower than how it would run with Windows 10. But no work stopping issues at all if you were to run it yourself. I believe Microsoft even has a published way to do it if I'm not mistaken. It's manual and a little messy for now, with some asterisks around risks for automated updates, but it works. Given all of this and MS's outlook towards backward compatibility I can see them eventually allowing older generations to upgrade after agreeing to some risks/performance degradation.
BirAdam 3y ago
Thank you for this info. I had no idea. Makes sense.

pgeorgi 3y ago

Would have been a fun exercise to get Intel and AMD to replace (or properly fix) their defective product, instead of just shrugging their shoulders and telling people to buy new cruft. Especially with win11 claiming to be eco-friendly in various places ("reduce CO2 footprint") it's somewhat annoying to force a hardware refresh cycle like that.

eru 3y ago
> Would have been a fun exercise to get Intel and AMD to replace (or properly fix) their defective product, instead of just shrugging their shoulders and telling people to buy new cruft. If people want extensive warranties like that on their electronics, they can already buy extensive warranties on their electronics. Why force everyone to pay for these things?
- dislikedtom2 3y ago
  Because this planned obsolete stuff is slowly killing us and yielding would probably only make it worse?
  - eru 3y ago
    If you don't like it, don't buy it. Or do you just want to control what other people are doing?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - atoav 3y ago
      Gotcha, so you are also against electrical regulations like requirements to use tested insulators etc? Because some regulation is actually useful in a world where consumers cannot be expected to know everything and be able to test everything. And some assumptions about a product should hold true as well. E.g. the assumption should be that if I buy a desktop CPU today I should be able to use it for at least n years. Because how would you know this beforehand? If Intel made an optimization that turns out to be a security flaw, that is totally their fault and they should cover it. This is nothing any consumer could have known (and rherefore avoided buying) beforehand. This is the cost of taking risks in business. It seems to be a popular stance these days to shill for corporations and protect them from ever having their risks realized. But that makes the products and the world we live in worse for everybody and gives you nothing at all.
      - eru 3y ago
        > And some assumptions about a product should hold true as well. E.g. the assumption should be that if I buy a desktop CPU today I should be able to use it for at least n years. Because how would you know this beforehand? You ask the manufacturer, duh? If they lie, that's fraud. If you don't like the answer, you don't buy. > If Intel made an optimization that turns out to be a security flaw, that is totally their fault and they should cover it. This is nothing any consumer could have known (and therefore avoided buying) beforehand. This is the cost of taking risks in business. Customers and suppliers should be able to allocate such risks between themselves however they like. You can fiddle with what the default should be, in case they haven't negotiated anything. But if both customer and supplier agree, the customer should be allowed to bear such a risk. > It seems to be a popular stance these days to shill for corporations and protect them from ever having their risks realized. Why? I have nothing against any particular allocation of the risks, as long as all involved parties agree. (Otherwise, they just don't make a deal.) > Gotcha, so you are also against electrical regulations like requirements to use tested insulators etc? If you claim they are tested, you better not lie. Otherwise it's fraud and you should be held liable. If a customer wants to buy untested insulators, who am I to keep them? I mean, in the most extreme case, a customer can buy bread and try to use it as an insulator, if they really want to. There's nothing the supplier can do about that.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Having a warranty on CPUs wouldn't have saved the environment. It probably would have made things worse as every user returned their computers for a new one.
- contravariant 3y ago
  Protection against being sold a defective product is considered 'extensive warranty' now? You're free to argue that this isn't a big enough defect to make the transaction fraudulent, but don't try to argue you need to pay more money to get the most basic protection. I mean, if you're not even getting the most basic protection than what on earth are you paying taxes for?
  - eru 3y ago
    What do taxes have to do with anything here? If someone promises you that the product will do something or eg 'not be defective', they should stick to that promise or face prosecution for fraud or false advertising or similar. I pay my taxes to eg fund national defense or make sure that poor people get some welfare. I don't pay my taxes so that the government can decide how much warranty I need. (They do some of that anyway. But I'd rather they don't.)
nearbuy 3y ago
"Defective" seems harsh here in that every product will always have issues of this degree no matter how hard one tries to make a perfect product. We're talking about a very subtle side channel attack. I promise you every computer system today still has some undiscovered side channel vulnerabilities. Meltdown-like vulnerabilities most likely existed since speculative execution was invented, likely decades before researchers discovered it. To my knowledge, Meltdown has never been exploited in the wild. Lawmakers could make chip designers replace all the chips but, 1) that's not very environmental either 2) it would be pretty disastrous for everyone when Intel and AMD go under because they can't actually afford to replace every chip they had in existence at the time 3) assuming this was somehow done in a way they could afford, the costs for these replacements ultimately get passed on to customers. For replacements that were never necessary to begin with. It's just kind of wasteful.
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  It seems defective and in need of replacement enough that Microsoft decided to not support these products in their operating system that would otherwise be well-enough supported by those chips. Right now, that argument seems to be simultaneously "It's critical enough for Microsoft to explicitly deny running Windows 11 on it" and "It's not critical enough that Intel and AMD should do something about it, except to sell more stuff." What kind of incentives does that create?
  - Drakim 3y ago
    It's the "too big to fail" scenario all over again. Just like with too big to fail companies and banks, only half of the equation is being applied: CPU industry wants to start using risky design techniques to get an edge on the competition? Who are we to tell them no? it's a free market. CPU industry can't afford to replace the defects that came about from their risky choices? They are too big and important to be held accountable.
    - nearbuy 3y ago
      You're going to have to go back to the 1990s if you want to undo the "risky design technique" of speculative execution. You're ignoring half the equation too here. There are benefits to having faster and more efficient computers for the past couple decades that could execute more instructions per clock cycle. These vulnerabilities are subtle, hard to predict, and can take years or decades to discover. Anything that makes computers faster is a risky design technique. If you want safe chips, you'd better say goodbye to caches, multithreading, and hyperthreading as well. You'll be left with a slow, inefficient chip. Non-American companies that aren't forced to take zero risks would take over the market and be miles ahead.
tinus_hn 3y ago
Specter and meltdown are part of a class of problems that exists in all processors Intel and AMD have in their lineup and the fixes are just papering over the published exploits. These problems can’t be fixed without large sacrifices in performance, perhaps it’ll happen in specialized products but it hasn’t happened yet.
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  Intel/AMD Model N is affected and therefore banned for use with Windows 11. As per your assertion (that I agree with, btw) Intel/AMD Model N+1 is affected (just slightly less so) and can be used with Windows 11. So, either this is fixable, then it's on Intel/AMD to replace defective hardware (or offer a fix that is worth unlocking Windows 11 over, e.g. through microcode) or it's not fixable in which case, why prevent the older chips from running Windows 11 if they're in exactly the same situation? Either way, Microsoft's decision seems arbitrary, and puts the onus on their customers instead of the culprits, the chip vendors, who even get rewarded by encouraging new sales!
  - tinus_hn 3y ago
    It’s the third option, the publicized issues have been solved. The claim that this class of issues is the reason for Microsoft’s hardware requirements for Windows 11 is not mine.

andai 3y ago

>they came with a price of a ~20% slowdown. Would be nice if upgrading to a new version of Windows came with such a mild penalty!

Hawxy 3y ago

It's a whole list of reasons, not just this. I was finally able to find the interview with David Weston that goes over all of the requirements: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-11-understanding-the-system-requirements-and-the-security-benefits/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-11-understandin...

alerighi 3y ago

Spectre and Meltdown are two vulnerabilities unlikely to affect the normal home usage of a computer. Are surely a concern for computers that are employed in companies or where you have to manage sensitive data, but surely for the desktop user is not a concern. We are talking of very elaborate attacks that are not something you find everyday. It's something to the level that a government agency could do, not the random attaccker that only wants to encrypt your data and ask you for a payment. Beside that in most desktop settings is even useless, you don't even care about elevating privileges with a vulnerability, since most users work with the administrator account anyway (yes there is UAC to ask for privileges but let's face it, 99% of users always click yes because they are used like this). I usually disable mitigations on my personal computers and I'm not concerned about it.

Gigachad 3y ago
>Spectre and Meltdown are two vulnerabilities unlikely to affect the normal home usage of a computer. It was found to be exploitable via a website in your browser. This would have been dire for any kind of user unless they literally only used the computer for gaming and did no web browsing.
andylynch 3y ago
I saw some big fights about Infra guys insisting on enabling their mitigations for every device, including the most latency sensitive ones running only in-house software.

MikusR 3y ago

Whiskey lake (8th gen) is affected by spectre/meltdown, but is is fully supported by Windows 11. There are also a couple 7th gen cpus supported, that by pure coincidence are the ones used, in at that time latest, surface studio. There are also many unsupported cpus that even with ~20% slowdown are twice as fast as the supported ones.

temac 3y ago

That was absolutely not the rational they provided. Which was more a meaningless thing like: we got telemetry measures that show that modern computers are faster and crash less, so we are randomly requiring them.

nstart 3y ago

Speculation: Windows 10 end of life's in 2025. It's entirely possible that by the time that year rolls around, they throw in some backwards compatibility with some asterisks around performance. Right now, Microsoft is not officially supporting the older processors but Windows 11 runs on 7th gen intel processors without any real issues except that it's a little slower than how it would run with Windows 10. But no work stopping issues at all if you were to run it yourself. I believe Microsoft even has a published way to do it if I'm not mistaken. It's manual and a little messy for now, with some asterisks around risks for automated updates, but it works. Given all of this and MS's outlook towards backward compatibility I can see them eventually allowing older generations to upgrade after agreeing to some risks/performance degradation.

BirAdam 3y ago

Thank you for this info. I had no idea. Makes sense.