Spectre/Meltdown/L1TF/MDS Mitigation Costs On An Intel Dual Core + HT Laptop

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Spectre/Meltdown/L1TF/MDS Mitigation Costs On An Intel Dual Core + HT Laptop

Following the recent desktop CPU benchmarks and server CPU benchmarks following the MDS/ZombieLoad mitigations coming to light and looking at the overall performance cost to mitigating these current CPU vulnerabilities, there was some speculation by some in the community that the older dual-core CPUs with Hyper Threading would be particularly hard hit. Here are some benchmarks of a Lenovo ThinkPad with Core i7 Broadwell CPU looking at those mitigation costs...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Spec-Melt-L1TF-MDS-Laptop-Run

[Azrael5]

Intel is a mess. I hope in a class action against this scammer!

[schmidtbag]

This is one of the few situations where I've actually been able to notice the performance losses without needing benchmarks to confirm my observations. I've noticed my i3 Haswell laptop getting slower and my overall CPU usage going up the past few months.

Intel is a mess. I hope in a class action against this scammer!

I'm actually a little surprised Intel hasn't been more heavily hit yet. I don't think anyone could sue them for the slew of security risks they put so many millions of people into, but, they could be sued for selling products that don't perform to the specs they expected. Not only has Intel not lowered their prices, they actually brought them up, due to the shortage.

[GunpowaderGuy]

Michael phoronix could you do a benchmark which tests ddr4 ram against rowhammer vulnerability ? it has been discovered that most ram with target row refresh or ecc are vulnerable to the attack , but maybe memory sticks with both features or of high enough quality can resist it .

[birdie]

This is disastrous. As if the last 6+ years of CPU performance gains have been wiped clean. The only saving grace for newer Intel CPUs is their high turbo frequency.

Michael phoronix could you do a benchmark which tests ddr4 ram against rowhammer vulnerability ? it has been discovered that most ram with target row refresh or ecc are vulnerable to the attack , but maybe memory sticks with both features or of high enough quality can resist it .

I've tested all the PCs/laptops in my possession (however they all contain DDR3 memory) and none is vulnerable. Maybe I'm lucky, maybe this particular vulnerability is a tad too difficult to exploit that's why it doesn't receive a lot of attention if any.

[speculatrix]

I've stuck with my Haswell i5 laptop, and Xeon v3 server, waiting for Intel or AMD to produce processor without the security issues. Looks like 2019 isn't going to be the year I upgrade them!

[birdie]

I've stuck with my Haswell i5 laptop, and Xeon v3 server, waiting for Intel or AMD to produce processor without the security issues. Looks like 2019 isn't going to be the year I upgrade them!

Some type of Spectre vulnerability (don't remember which one) is impossible to fix in HW unless speculative execution is completely disabled, so we'll have to live with that.

[Guest]

Considering the hit on context switching, I don't think I want to see benchmarks on older chips (which I happen to own and use).

[teresaejunior]

This is so much fun. Slower I/O, memory allocation, network latency. Some SSDs work at almost half speed. Thanks, Intel.

[Azrael5]

This is one of the few situations where I've actually been able to notice the performance losses without needing benchmarks to confirm my observations. I've noticed my i3 Haswell laptop getting slower and my overall CPU usage going up the past few months.


I'm actually a little surprised Intel hasn't been more heavily hit yet. I don't think anyone could sue them for the slew of security risks they put so many millions of people into, but, they could be sued for selling products that don't perform to the specs they expected. Not only has Intel not lowered their prices, they actually brought them up, due to the shortage.

If it is not possible to hit the scammer by laws, consumers can hit Intel "the scammer", boycotting its products.