01-26-2018, 09:29 PM
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-i...36405.html
Quote:Krzanich later said the company would begin to ship products with "in-silicon" fixes for the vulnerabilities this year. He did not elaborate, but logically this means that the company will include these fixes in the 10nm generation of products. Krzanich also later stated that the company expects to continue developing its 14nm products in 2018, so we could see yet another round of 14nm processors (sigh). Of course, one could speculate that these chips might also have in-silicon patches for the vulnerabilities.
Intel's newer chips (post-Broadwell) support a PCID (Post-Context Identifier) feature that helps reduce the performance impact of the Meltdown patches on newer hardware. Intel's plans to institute in-silicon fixes could reduce the impact even further, or perhaps remove it entirely. That's a sorely needed feature for a company that is reeling from the never-ending onslaught of press coverage around the vulnerabilities. We're reaching out to Intel for more details about the new silicon fix.
Some analysts are predicting that Intel could experience higher sales as companies refresh their hardware to offset the lost performance from the patches. Considering Intel's apparently fast cadence of in-silicon fixes, that could hold true. Krzanich also said the company is focused on developing high-quality mitigations for customers, and it has created a website dedicated to helping customers deal with the vulnerabilities. (The link to this website has not been provided. We have requested the link.)