Intel chips have their issues and patching those issues causes performance degradation in some cases and now it seems that Intel Spectre patches that were released to patch the vulnerabilities cause problems of their own. Shit has hit the fan for Intel and it seems that there is nowhere to go but down. Linux inventor Linus Torvalds voiced his concerns regarding Intel Spectre patches and we are going to talk about that here.
Linus Torvalds has already given a big “fuck you” to Nvidia for not supporting the Linux platform and now Intel Spectre patches have annoyed him to a degree that he has used the same kind of language. The following is what he had to say in this regard:
“What the f*ck is going on? As it is, the patches are COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE,”
It did not stop there as he had plenty to say and well it goes to show that this is something that affects everyone. He went on to say the following:
Is Intel really planning on making this shit architectural? Has anybody talked to them and told them they are f*cking insane?
Furthermore, he asked the people at Intel to talk to their managers and try to talk some sense into them. He also made it pretty clear that this is an architectural issue and that the problem goes back 2 decades.
Certainly it’s a nasty hack, but hey — the world was on fire and in the end we didn’t have to just turn the datacentres off and go back to goat farming, so it’s not all bad.
Cleary he is not happy with the Intel Spectre patches and how the company is approaching the idea. The whole thing is pretty long so you can read all of it here. But something interesting that he pointed out is as follows and I will let you be the judge of what it means.
The patches do things like add the garbage MSR writes to the kernel entry/exit points. That’s insane. That says “we’re trying to protect the kernel”. We already have retpoline there, with less overhead. So somebody isn’t telling the truth here. Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons. Sorry for having to point that out.
Let us know what you think about these Intel Spectre patches that are causing issues and whether or not you agree with what Linus Torvalds had to say about all this.
