01-03-2018, 11:40 PM
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-b...36208.html
Quote:The vulnerability appears to be most dangerous to data center workloads and virtualization. However, it is irrational to assume that the overwhelming majority of data centers will see a 30% reduction in performance. Losing even 15% of the computational horsepower from a data center would be a major blow, and that compute would have to be replaced almost immediately. The patch has been in development for several months, so if Intel and the major data center operators were expecting massive performance reductions, there would have been an incredible spike in data center equipment purchases.
Also, we would have likely already seen signs of a pending financial disaster for Intel if there was a serious threat to a wide swath of the data center. Intel's customers would likely be able to pursue litigation for widespread losses that are directly the fault of Intel. It's also reasonable to assume that the company would be required to replace faulty processors. For instance, Intel disclosed during its Q4 2016 earnings call that it had encountered a higher-than-expected failure rate for some of its processors, so it established a financial reserve to deal with the costs of replacements. We reported on Intel's statements, and later the fund was connected to failures in Intel's Atom C2000 processors. In no recent financial commentary has Intel disclosed the establishment of any new funds, so it appears the company doesn't foresee significant hardware replacements any time soon.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich also recently sold $11 million in stock, which some have proclaimed is a sign that he's unloading his shares before a pending disaster. However, Krzanich sold the stock under a 10b-51 plan, which is a pre-planned sale of stocks intended to prevent insider trading. The nature of Krzanich's transactions makes it unlikely that the trades are a precursor of a major monetary loss for the company.
Currently, there are no major shifts in Intel's stock that would indicate a mass sell-off by investors. There are conflicting reports about the impact to AMD processors, and AMD's shares are currently up 5%. However, such an increase is a fairly common occurrence for the sometimes-volatile AMD stock, so the bump may be incidental; in any case, it's not out of the ordinary.
For now, we await more detail on the nature of the bug and its impact. We expect an update to emerge in a future Patch Tuesday update, but Microsoft has not listed an official release date.
The bug is locked behind a wall of NDAs at this point, which is frustrating. However, the silence is necessary to prevent a wave of exploits. We expect, and have seen already, the normal level of hyperventilation that comes with such news, but it's best to wait for more information. We have followed up with Intel for more information and will update as necessary.