Many of the chip manufacturers are in trouble with the discovery of Spectre and Meltdown security flaws and Intel is the most prominent chip manufacturer being affected by it, however, Intel has promised Spectre hardware fix or elimination of these flaws from its chips by the end of 2018.
Spectre being a hardware security flaw requires OS or BIOS patches to make the system secure with BIOS patches currently causing performance drops and reboot issues is another story. According to Intel, its next-generation of processors will have hardware fix for these Spectre and Meltdown security flaws.
During the recent earnings call, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich revealed that the company is working on a hardware fix for its next line of processors that will be available in 2019. According to Brian, the company plans ‘in-silicon” fixes by the end of the year.
If Intel sticks to the plan then the 10nm chips that ship by the end of 2018 and arrive in 2019 will have the built-in Spectre and Meltdown fixes. However, this means that the mid-2018 line of 14nm processors will be vulnerable to these security flaws.
Also, the company didn’t share any specifics of the Spectre Hardware Fix for Intel chips and it is not known if the Spectre Hardware fix will impact the performance as the BIOS and OS patches have slowed down performance to varying degrees based on
the chip.
Speaking of BIOS Patches for Spectre and Meltdown, Intel has asked users to not download these patches as they create the reboot issues in systems. According to Intel, they are working on new patches that are currently being tested and the new solution will be rolled out once the testing has been done.
Not only Intel but, Dell has also asked its users to not install the Spectre Patches and has advised to roll back to the previous BIOS version to those who have already updated their BIOS.
Furthermore, Dell has encouraged its users to install the operating systems patches for these security issues as soon as possible. Also, the company has asked users to stay away from any material that comes from an untrusted source.
Also, Linux inventor Linus Torvalds is calling Intel Spectre BIOS update as “Complete And Utter Garbage”.
Do you think Intel will be able to iron out these security flaws without impacting the performance? Let us know in the comments.
