More Spectre + Meltdown Updates Heading Into Linux 4.16

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 18 March 2018 at 07:45 AM EDT. 8 Comments
LINUX KERNEL
Thomas Gleixner who has been wrangling all of the Spectre and Meltdown related patches for the Linux kernel tree has submitted another pull request of more changes to land for the Linux 4.16 cycle that is nearing the end of its development.

This latest batch of "x86/pti" updates for "melted spectrum updates" is relatively modest. Skylake C2 has been removed from the speculation control microcode blacklist, as a result of Intel's latest guidance. There is also more work around improving the CPU microcode loading process, preventing a possible CPU synchronization issue, fixing VM86 POPF emulation, an objtool update, and adding new CPU feature bits for indicating PCONFIG / Total Memory Encryption presence.

Overall, nothing too exciting but just more maintenance type work. The complete list of patches can be found via this pull request. I'll also be having some more Intel/AMD mitigation Linux benchmarks shortly on Phoronix.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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