Intel's Mitigation For CVE-2019-14615 Graphics Vulnerability Obliterates Gen7 iGPU Performance

[timofonic]

Interesting but I was always impressed with the 68000. Back in the day my first really useful computer was a MacPlus which amazed me compare to the various 8 bit trash that came before it.

I always thought it was too bad Motorola could not move the platform forward at the rate X86 evolved. As for Intel, frankly they deserve all the grief they are getting right now. I’m glad to see operations like ARM and AMD giving them all the heat they can. The one reason I hate the likes of E Warren is that you need big businesses to go after companies like Intel.

I'm amazed this didn't get into a Phoronix article, it seems quite relevant.

For non-US people: The New Yorker - How Elizabeth Warren Came Up with a Plan to Break Up Big Tech.

[MadCatX]

So let me see if I got this right. First we had a major vulnerability in the MEI, then an ongoing series of side-channel attacks on the CPU with serious performance impact, now a security hole in GPUs spanning multiple generations. I wonder if Sandy Bridge is really not affected or if they just didn't bother testing that far back.

[misGnomer]

Another victim here.

My personal desktop and laptops have been hit by all the Intel mitigations already, but as I occasionally use the (Haswell) desktop for light casual gaming this looks like the end of the rope.

One of my personal environmental requirements is energy efficiency and until now Haswell just about made the grade. Doesn't look like the hardware is suitable for post-retirement media service either.

I don't have too many positive feelings towards Intel Corp. these days, but I'm still grateful for their Linux devs for the great work they've done over the years. This isn't their fault.


Now, looking into the future I would love to see some *standardized* and *modular* laptop designs where most components are user-replaceable (even if in a workshop) and upgradeable, batteries included. Few of us actually *needs* a wafer-thin fully glued closed-box "com-book" that needs to be disposed of after only two years of use.

Meanwhile it would be nice if I could take my still otherwise perfect Intel laptop to a shop and have them replace the Intel innards with new (ARM or AMD?) parts instead of having to 'landfill' the entire unit.


Back to the Haswell desktop and its graphics implosion: one partial solution could be disabling the iGPU and getting a really energy efficient latest gen *passively cooled* graphics card. Looks like Intel themselves have had half a year to consider providing just such a solution, but somehow I don't think that idea ever passed their beancounters. AMD could do it too, and for many graphics-less Ryzen systems such a modern-but-low-end card could be ideal, but where are they?

[Hibbelharry]

If I'm not totally wrong there is a big math problem in the graphs on page 1. If we're loosing more than 100 percent of performance, we will have negative fps. Essentially our displays will become scanners, where you need to input frames instead of outputting those.

If we're loosing half the performance, we should be at 50%, not 100%.

[cl333r]

I'm no AMD fanboy, but.. now I am!

[V1tol]

Mine old AMD Athlon II X3 with mobo integrated HD3200 is getting better and better with each Intel vulnerability

[starshipeleven]

If I'm not totally wrong there is a big math problem in the graphs on page 1. If we're loosing more than 100 percent of performance, we will have negative fps. Essentially our displays will become scanners, where you need to input frames instead of outputting those.

If we're loosing half the performance, we should be at 50%, not 100%.

the -260% ish It's a java benchmark, everything can happen

[marlock]

Blunt answer: complete non-issue.

Business computers using an iGPU aren't going to be doing much with it beyond hardware acceleration of the Windows desktop and Microsoft Office. And these are already very low in resource usage.

Those with more demanding requirements will already have computers loaded with a dGPU.

Perceptible impact will be essentially zero.

Only consumers will try something silly like playing games on an Intel iGPU.

Actually if you look at the benchmarks, browsers are the heart and soul of common business and home use cases, and that was also greatly affected, as can be seen in Java 2D and such. And then you have to consider how this impacts all those lovely Eclipse apps out there too... and hope MS Office isn't becoming one, and pray that Office365 isn't as common as MS would want it... but MS Teams, Sharepoint, OneDrive, IBM Lotus Notes, the entire suite of Google office apps, ESRI's Portal for ArcGIS, ... those are all certainly affected.

Sure, as only old gen Intel iGPUs are severely affected, they are already not the greatest even for these tasks... but in my own work experience, swapping HDDs for SSDs and ensuring 8GB of RAM (both things you can upgrade even in laptops and not so common in cheap setups at the time) could still have extracted a longer lifetime for those venerable junks... and now this much of a slowdown is possibly nosediving them below minimal acceptable performance even with the mentioned upgrades.

ps: can anyone help me get the right uid for quoting? can't find forum comment syntax help anywhere and looks like I botched this bit of the guesswork

[uxmkt]

I smell a new form of Planned Obscolescence.

[Hibbelharry]

the -260% ish It's a java benchmark, everything can happen

Made my day

Seems you've made the same experiences using java like me.