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Linus Torvalds Says Intel Needs To Admit It Has Issues With CPUs (itwire.com)
troublemaker_23 shares an article from ITWire:
Linux creator Linus Torvalds has had some harsh words for Intel in the course of a discussion about patches for two bugs that were found to affect most of the company's processors... Torvalds was clearly unimpressed by Intel's bid to play down the crisis through its media statements, saying: "I think somebody inside of Intel needs to really take a long hard look at their CPUs, and actually admit that they have issues instead of writing PR blurbs that say that everything works as designed... Or is Intel basically saying 'we are committed to selling you shit forever and ever, and never fixing anything'?" he asked. "Because if that's the case, maybe we should start looking towards the ARM64 people more."
Elsewhere Linus told ZDNet that "there's no one number" for the performance drop users will experience after patches. "It will depend on your hardware and on your load. I think 5 percent for a load with a noticeable kernel component (e.g. a database) is roughly in the right ballpark. But if you do micro-benchmarks that really try to stress it, you might see double-digit performance degradation. A number of loads will spend almost all their time in user space, and not see much of an impact at all."
Elsewhere Linus told ZDNet that "there's no one number" for the performance drop users will experience after patches. "It will depend on your hardware and on your load. I think 5 percent for a load with a noticeable kernel component (e.g. a database) is roughly in the right ballpark. But if you do micro-benchmarks that really try to stress it, you might see double-digit performance degradation. A number of loads will spend almost all their time in user space, and not see much of an impact at all."
And, to be honest, the larger world has no idea who the guy is nor to they pay any attention to what he has to say no matter how much attention he seeks. He has found/created a small pond, and careens around like a shark in a goldfish bowl. That's not particularly bad or at all unique, but certainly no one at Intel gives a crap what he thinks, and to expect any different shows a lack of perspective.
I'm pro-ARM because everyone can view their RTL, not like gollumy-intel/amd/ibm. I also agree that the PR wing should STF.
However, as a chip designer at intel for >17 years, I can say that the instruction decoder alone is hands down the most complex part of the die. cache timing attacks like this are briliiant, and there simply aren't enough brilliant people to think of this stuff ahead of time. intel pushes and pushes and pushes. their design teams and architects are driven ruthlessly. to call an intel product "shit" shows complete lack of understanding of the industry.
you heard me. he may be a great programmer, but he doesn't know DICK about how hard it is to make a CPU. and why would he? he writes software that can be patched in the blink of an eye, that he wrote HIMSELF. There are literally tens of thousands of designers at Intel, AMD, IBM and ARM (and TI) that have to work together on projects that make the linux kernel look like a spec of fly shit.
if linus had to run a CPU project, he'd fold like a wet envelope.
so please linus, quit throwing a tantrum.