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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."

42 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. Red Hat screws up their implementaition of the fix by whoever57 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  2. Re:Zhaoxin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We clearly don't trust Intel ... why would we trust Chinese CPUs??

  3. Re:Look to arm64 by Gaygirlie · · Score: 5, Informative

    His point is more likely the fact that ARM didn't do any sort of PR-bullshit and instead produced a very, very in-depth whitepaper, example-code and whatnot on the whole thing. Their behaviour here is pretty much everything one would hope for in a case like this.

  4. Re:Zhaoxin by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    We clearly don't trust Intel ... why would we trust Chinese CPUs??

    Who is more likely to put in a backdoor for the NSA? Intel or China?

  5. I actually do think the issue is minor by BlueCoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The kernel memory read issue was 90% a design decision to improve performance. I would argue that it should actually be an option in the BIOS. The fact the AMD didn't do this with zen to match Intel is what is really interesting. Intel did a little cheat to improve performance but AMD didn't and chose caution.

    To me it's not a clear cut case if you brought a class action into court. The engineers cheated a bit but didn't think it would turn into such a security hole. I can just imagine the closing arguments... point is computers are complicated and not necessarily a guaranteed thing except that they can compute.

    1. Re: I actually do think the issue is minor by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      AMD got lucky with their design decisions, if it was a conscious decision they'd have exposed Intel's flaw themselves.

      You're acting like it's possible to make a decision of this magnitude unconsciously. AMD consciously chose to do things the correct way, whether or not they knew what Intel was doing. That they didn't expose Intel's flaw suggests that they in fact did not know that Intel was playing fast and loose there. I'd argue that if they did know what Intel was doing and chose not to do the same, that would be even more laudable, but I am perfectly happy that they chose to do things correctly no matter the reason. It means that most of my systems are secure. I only have one arm64 system, and it's not doing any heavy lifting tasks so it's not likely to see any significant performance impact. I long ago retired all my intel-processor systems, and both my primary and secondary desktops have AMD CPUs. My hobby systems have in-order Motorola processors, and one of them even has a MMU. I don't connect the other one to the internet, although it does have Ethernet. My lady, on the other hand, has got a laptop with an i7, so may face some perceptible performance impact.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:I actually do think the issue is minor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the Intel bug does not look like an intentional design decision to me, more like an oversight. the performance win speculating over security domain page boundaries can not be that large, I would guess it should be 1% loss.
      IMHO someone just did not really think all the details and consequences of this boundary case thru, ...

  6. Re:Linus love attention more than money by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't think he craves attention; I think he's just a guy who speaks his mind, sometimes a little bit too much. With that said, I don't see why we need to publish so many of his brain dumps; there are many people with a way more valuable opinion on the subject, from a technical, legal or business perspective.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  7. the many forks of speculation by epine · · Score: 4, Informative

    So you decide to speculate a future instruction.

    It happens to be a load.

    The address is [ebp+eax]. A recent instruction had the same address field, so you speculate that it remained the same.

    Now you need to translate the address. The translate might be in the TLB, but you check, and for some reason it isn't.

    So you decide to speculatively trigger TLB load.

    Finally, you get a physical address back. A previous write instruction is not yet translated, but it seems unlikely it will translate to the same address, so you decide to speculate the load and you make a cache line request from L1.

    It might be in L1, but it isn't. So you decide to speculate again, and request it from L2. Not in L3, either, so finally you speculate the load all the way to external memory. When the cache line returns, you speculatively cache this at all levels. Then you speculatively store the value into the target register. The final step was the least dangerous, because you can dump this later, no harm to the abstract state. But the concrete side effects on the TLB and the three layers of cache are not so easily reversed. In theory, the concrete state doesn't leak into the abstract state. Because we simply don't like to think about time (time, above all things, being never simple; hint: functional programming has no time, only progress).

    Not all speculative architectures are created equal. There are many opportunities for an architecture to Just Say No.

    With cache coherence, you have the MESI protocol (and its bewildering shoe full of second cousins).

    One could apply the same concept of "exclusive" to the page tables, an exclusively mapped page being one mapped only onto into the current process and security context. If TLB speculation hits a different kind of beast, abandon speculation. Same thing with cache fill. Concrete side effects thereby only accrue from speculation to exclusive resources. Share-nothing usually solves most problems in computer science (except performance, which is mainly defined in the time domain).

    I'm gong to abandon the back of my envelope here, One has to think really damn hard to take this to the next logical level, and frankly, I don't have a damn to spare right this very minute.

    But please, advance the conversation beyond:

    [_] has speculation
    [_] does not have speculation

    Because that is Intel's diabolical trap, for as long as their PR department can continue to get away with tugging their wool in broad daylight.

  8. Re:Zhaoxin by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

    Just bring back the Alpha chip. Whoops! Intel owns it. That sucks! Once again our technology is crippled by patents and copyrights. We could have a vastly superior chip right now. Oh well...

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  9. Re:Zhaoxin by belg4mit · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's not a pure monopoly, but it has a lot of monopoly power. Monopoly is not a binary state, as most lay pedants assume.

    --
    Were that I say, pancakes?
  10. Don't like Linus; Agree with Linus; CEO s/b fired. by CraigCruden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ARM (and AMD) may be susceptible to the lesser of the two [evil] exploits... but the impact for that second one is considerably less than Meltdown (which is specific to Intel only). ARM has been very open and detailed with regards to the impact -- and gives every indication it is taking the issue seriously.

    Intel on the other hand issued a totally bizarre PR spin. Trying to spin it as works as designed (which might be the case, but the design was flawed), trying to distract the public by using 'Look over there...' deflection technique. Then indicating that the earliest architectural change will be later this year (which by the way coincides with the beginning of the next generation release). Processors for one generation of chips tends to be phased in over a two year period - does this mean that they plan to continue selling defective CPUs for the next 2 and a half years?

    On top of that the news that the [probably legal] sale share (after the news of the defect, but before it was made public) -- is at least optically horrible. An ethical CEO would have delayed the planned share sale until after the defect was public - and accepted the risk of holding onto the shares during that time. Not to mention selling 889,700 shares and keeping only the absolute minimum to remain CEO ... 250,000 all at one time.... is also optically bad. I understand the need to diversify your investments, but he should only be selling at most 25% of his shares on an annual basis.

    This all put together indicates to me that the current CEO should be fired.

  11. Re:That'll show 'em by dcollins117 · · Score: 2

    Not sure how much Intel really cares about threats from the free Linux community - vs Microsoft, etc...

    Do they care about selling CPUs? Do they care about the competition who clearly has the advantage now? If they do they better get their shit together and stop pissing off the IT guys that will make or break them.

  12. Re:Zhaoxin by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Informative

    Chinese companies just put in backdoors for the Chinese government, organised crime, your Chinese competitors and so on.

    https://thehackernews.com/2015...

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/f...

    http://www.securityweek.com/ap...

    http://www.businessinsider.com...

    https://tvnewswatch.blogspot.c...

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  13. Re:Zhaoxin by Hal_Porter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The patents on the original MIPS architecture have run out by now. And MIPS was both very similar to Alpha and very elegant.

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  14. Re: Linus love attention more than money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    well, the right thing for intel to do IS to recall all CPUs for users that request it. also to NOT downplay the huuuge security issue that they have caused, in their race for corner-cutting. maybe to publish some test results for the patches, maybe open some specs that might help the devs in better patching this issue in software, maybe even dump some cash for the devs. These are just from the top of my head, but you get the picture. The whole fiasco was very badly handled by Intel.

  15. BS - It is serious. by CraigCruden · · Score: 4, Informative

    BS. There are already proof of concepts that can be run and are in the hands of a select few for testing purposes. We have no idea if these exploits have been used - only that we have no visibility on it. The only real visibility we have is when a whitehat reports it, or when someone is caught. While personal computers are less impacted, the fact that the browsers will all also have to be patched since it can also be exploited through javascript... problematic.

    The issue is that through using the exploits you can have access to things like passwords used in kernel code, certificates, etc. -- and that can get this through pilfering the cache -- which breaks the isolation between user applications and the operating system.... While already bad on a personal computer, it is horribly bad for shared hosting environments -- where some actor can get access to a common computing environment and attack from the inside.

    1. Re:BS - It is serious. by swillden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No known exploits in the wild yet.

      How many unknown exploits in the wild?

      Oh, right, we don't know. If we did, they wouldn't be unknown.

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  16. Re: That'll show 'em by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

    This was said over and over on slashdot: not everyone has your use-case.

    Ya, I get that. But I'll note that I'm a system programmer and system administrator and have administered Windows, Unix and Linux on just about everything from PCs to Crays over my 30+ years, so I have a lot of varied use-cases under my belt. I have Intel and AMD systems at home running a mix of Windows, Linux, BSD and vSphere - with a mix on that.

    linux dominates the server market. it's installed on all the world's supercomputers. if these have a 5% performance hit because of the intel meltdown bug, you bet your ass it's a big deal (as in very expensive). also all enterprises run linux on servers to a degree.

    Sure and many of those system use Intel processors. Sure, they could switch to other architectures or they could just add 5% more Intel CPUs. Perhaps Intel could cut the price by an appropriate amount to compensate.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  17. Re:Zhaoxin by davecb · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, 83% is often used as a cutoff in both the US and Canada, derived from (US) judge Learned Hand's opinion that a market share of ninety percent 'is enough to constitute a monopoly; it is doubtful whether sixty . . . percent would be enough; and certainly thirty-three percent is not.' [ United States v. Aluminum Co. of Am., 148 F.2d 416, 424 (2d Cir. 1945)]

    --
    davecb@spamcop.net
  18. No issue with Intel and design. by CraigCruden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And to be quite honest, that was not how I read Linus thing... Linus can be a wrap the contents of a valid issue in a bit of what some have termed a 'Hissy fit'/'tantrum'. The issue that he seems to have is not that there is a defect, not that it has to be patched in the kernel -- but that Intel's PR is on overdrive and gives no indication of taking responsibility... and not being open and transparent with regards to fixing it and timeline for those actions.

    It is not the design / defect that I have lost respect for Intel, nor the technical competence of it's employees... My issue resides with the C-level's response to this defect that I have tot take issue with - and that is how I really read the email. ARM is not defect free, but the difference is that their response to it has been much more professional and transparent.

    Being a software developer by trade, I am all to familiar that nothing is defect free... and defects are a part of the process.... the response and how these defects are handled is where you win or lose respect (assuming you are not totally incompetent and the software is not unusable).

  19. Re:Don't like Linus; Agree with Linus; CEO s/b fir by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > But in typical, Linus hissy-fit fashion he pivots to tangential claims, like how Intel will "sell shit forever" and "never fix anything".

    Dude, you and I are seeing this NOW.

    But some folks have been aware of that fact since some time, and no solution came up -- because this one is hard... hardware. The bubble just popped because Google decided enough is enough (not to mention this affects their business directly).

    And what about the designers? What were they thinking? Don't they know about space separation? My guess is that is became hard to adhere to Moore's law curve and they had to cut some corners.

    Linus is referring to the fact that such problems have not been not addressed nor fixed since years ago. He has worked with processors, he knows what he's saying -- he's not just a software guy.

    I'd never use such colorful language as his, but this time it is totally justified -- not just because it's a serious problem, but because it seems Intel is totally blasé about it.

  20. ARM has a lot less to lose by AcidPenguin9873 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While ARM CPUs are relatively ubiquitous in smartphones and tablets, those devices aren't nearly as high-value of a target as servers, where Intel CPUs dominate (well over 90% of the market).

    Linus is in a unique position - he is an engineer, almost 100% focused on technical solutions, yet he is also a public facing figure and is able to make public comments. He also (to the best of my knowledge) doesn't have to worry about customers, profits, shareholders, etc., things that a for-profit, publicly-traded company does. Most of the time, the engineers aren't the ones making public comments. I haven't heard from any Intel engineers yet, only their PR department, but I would guess the Intel engineers are just as interested in fixing this as he is, but we aren't hearing about it.

    1. Re:ARM has a lot less to lose by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Linus is in a unique position - he is an engineer, almost 100% focused on technical solutions, yet he is also a public facing figure and is able to make public comments. He also (to the best of my knowledge) doesn't have to worry about customers, profits, shareholders, etc., things that a for-profit, publicly-traded company does

      You've succinctly explained why Intel is in the troubles they are.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  21. Re:Zhaoxin by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Funny

    Most likely to put backdoors into PLA are ColorFabb, Faberdashery or Proto-Pasta. But you'll have to download a 3D model of a backdoor first.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  22. Re:Red Hat screws up their implementaition of the by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2

    CentOS's kernel-plus 7.4 boots fine under Xen 4.9 running with Fedora 27, all with the latest patches.

    RHAT doesn't give a damn about Xen. Maybe they didn't break it intentionally on 7.4 but they didn't test it either. 'Cause nobody like Amazon uses Xen, right?

    But buy their KVM product, it's much less prone to [their] breakage. Hah. Debian isn't hostile to Xen, nor is Arch.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  23. Economics by CraigCruden · · Score: 2

    Ask anyone involved - even whitehats - and you are likely to be told that the demand and renumeration for exploits on the open market is higher than it is for submitting it and expecting a bounty. You have state sponsors (some that are closer to mafia states) such as North Korea and Russia financing the finding of exploits. Your own government is also accumulating exploits - but the only time you see them used is when they are leaked - they are not typically submitted to companies - since they want to use them. You have major multinational criminal organizations that make significant amounts of their income through high tech attacks -- which can net billions in a single attack - making the cost of acquiring exploits a rounding error. You have thriving dark web marketplaces for selling these exploits. This industry dwarfs the whitehat industry considerably. Basically, there is more investment on monetizing exploits than there is discovering these exploits for ethical purposes.

    1. Re:Economics by swillden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Ask anyone involved - even whitehats - and you are likely to be told that the demand and renumeration for exploits on the open market is higher than it is for submitting it and expecting a bounty.

      I work with a lot of such people, and their response is that remuneration on the dark side is iffy and dangerous, and there's the constant threat of getting caught and prosecuted. Their opinion is that -- excluding spook operations -- the black hat side is small and relatively untalented.

      I guess maybe it depends how you classify the government-funded stuff. Personally, I don't consider it either white or black, but somewhere in between. And I don't think it attracts the best, though perhaps quantity counts as much as quality. There was a time when the NSA attracted the best, but that was before Snowden.

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  24. Re:Zhaoxin by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Informative

    MIPS was bought by Imagination Technologies who also own PowerVR (and, oddly enough Pure, a wonderfully geeky DAB radio company)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    MIPS/Imagination is heading resolutely for embedded platforms and probably the plughole.

    Still the original MIPS architecture is probably patent free. And Loongson make MIPS compatible chips. Unlicensed as far as I know. Not that there is much to licence in the original MIPS architecture

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    So it's possible for third parties to build MIPS compatible chips. Not MIPS32/MIPS64 but the original 64 bit MIPS III architecture.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Hell skip the patented bits and make them NOPs. Lexra got in trouble not for implementing them but for making them illegal instructions. MIPS's lawyers argued successfully that a system integrator could write an illegal instruction trap handler that implemented the missing instructions in software, in perhaps the most amazing abuse of the patent system ever.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    In 1999 MIPS Technologies sued Lexra again, but this time for infringing its patents on unaligned loads and stores. Though Lexra's processor designs did not implement unaligned loads and stores, it was possible to emulate the functionality of unaligned loads and stores through a long series of other instructions. In the opinion of Lexra, the ability to emulate the function of unaligned loads and stores in software predated the grant of the patent in question and could not be viewed as an infringement of the hardware patent by any reasonable interpretation. Also, much earlier than any MIPS Technologies processor, IBM mainframes supported unaligned memory operations. In these earlier IBM processors, unaligned memory operations and partial access to registers were available through microcode and the instruction set architecture. These aspects of earlier IBM processors posed the much greater threat of patent invalidation to MIPS Technologies, compared to the seemingly vacuous MIPS Technologies infringement claim against Lexra.

    http://probell.com/Lexra/

    If a Lexra processor encountered an unaligned load or store instruction in a program then it did the same thing that it would do for any other invalid opcode, it took a reserved instruction exception. In the second lawsuit between MIPS Technologies and Lexra, filed November 1999, MIPS Technologies claimed that because exception handler software could be written to emulate the function of unaligned load and store hardware, using many other instructions, Lexra's processors infringed the patent. Upon learning of this broad interpretation of the patent, Lexra requested that the US Patent and Trademark office (USPTO) reexamine whether the patent was novel when granted. Almost every microprocessor ever designed can emulate the functionality of unaligned loads and stores in software. MIPS Technologies did not invent that. By any reasonable interpretation of the MIPS Technologies' patent, Lexra did not infringe. In mid-2001 Lexra received a preliminary ruling from the USPTO that key claims in the unaligned load and store patent were invalid because of prior art in an IBM CISC patent. However, MIPS Technologies appealed the USPTO ruling and, in the mean time, won a favorably broad interpretation of the language of the patent from a judge. That forced Lexra into a settlement that included dropping the reexamination request before MIPS Technologies might have lost its appeal.

    It was never determined that processors that execute the MIPS-I instruction set, but treat unaligned loads and stores as reserved instructions, infringed the '976 patent. The patent exp

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  25. Linus is reasonable angry at Intel's response by CraigCruden · · Score: 2

    I am not aware of Linus hating Intel, he definitely hates the way Intel has tried to BS / Spin / deflect blame / avoid responsibility. If you appreciate companies that spend more time on BS / Spin / deflecting blame and avoiding responsibility rather than being transparent about their own failures and how THEY plan to address it... then Intel is the company for you (under this CEO anyways - we will see if he lasts).

    ARM has been transparent, detailed and transparent about their failings (the lesser of the defects) and deserves respect for that.

  26. FDIV redeux by mrflash818 · · Score: 2

    The severity of the FDIV bug is debated. Intel, producer of the affected chip, claims that the common user would experience it once every 27,000 years while IBM, manufacturer of a chip competing with Intel's Pentium, claims that the common user would experience it once every 24 days.[citation needed] Though rarely encountered by most users (Byte magazine estimated that 1 in 9 billion floating point divides with random parameters would produce inaccurate results),[3] both the flaw and Intel's initial handling of the matter were heavily criticized by the tech community.

    In December 1994, Intel recalled the defective processors. In January 1995, Intel announced "a pre-tax charge of $475 million against earnings, ostensibly the total cost associated with replacement of the flawed processors."[1]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    --
    Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
  27. Ryzen my friends by Tough+Love · · Score: 3, Informative

    Meanwhile, enjoying my Ryzen, largely unaffected by Meltdown or Spectre in spite of some well meaning or self-serving FUD to the the contrary. Yes, I got an early part with the segfault bug, but AMD RMAed without fuss when presented with appropriate https://github.com/suaefar/ryz...>test data to eliminate the possibility of bad motherboard, memory or overclocking. Quite different attitude compared to Intel! And the Ryzen is sweet - 16 high performing CPU threads, tiny power consumption at idle and respectable under full load. Integer performance, iow, compiling is stellar and floating point is not shabby. Basically, Ryzen out-cores Intel's competing i7 parts by a wide margin, acquits itself well in single-core too and draws so little power that the CPU fan is off or barely turning for most normal desktop usage. And when all 16 threads are going full blast, iow doing real work, total system power is around 120 watts, the system still runs nearly silent. Can't say enough good things about it.

    If you do step up to Ryzen, be aware of two things: 1) Check the production week stamped on the CPU, it has the form 17xx where xx is the week... make sure this is higher than week 25, otherwise run kill-ryzen.sh to verify the segfault bug and get an RMA promptly from AMD's only support site, if you see it. Windows users need to boot Linux to do this, get a live iso on a usb stick to do this in maximum comfort, and preferably, just overwrite Windows when done :-) Most of that early production is sold out already, so the chance of getting a bad part is slim, but be aware. Windows users for the most part don't seem to see any issue even with the early parts. Good for them, but it goes along with significantly lower performance without the upgrade to LInux :-) 2) Be aware that Ryzen has no on-board GPU, in spite of the fact that your Ryzen motherboard has video connectors... these are for AMD's APUs, which use the same socket. Respectable chips in their own right especially in terms of value for money, but when you run Ryzen you need to run a discrete GPU too. This is what you want anyway, because what is the point of crippling your high end desktop processor with a mickey mouse embedded GPU? To be specific: AMD's fattest APU has eight compute units (512 stream processors) vs 64 in the current Vega part, plus uses processor memory instead of higher bandwidth dedicated graphics memory.

    Of course, what I really want is a threadripper... that's next.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  28. Re: Zhaoxin by Jesus+H+Rolle · · Score: 4, Funny

    Judge Learned Hand

    He won the name game.

  29. Re:Zhaoxin by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's not a pure monopoly, but it has a lot of monopoly power. Monopoly is not a binary state, as most lay pedants assume.

    There is no such legal concept as "pure monopoly". There is only anti-competitive behavior as defined in America by the Sherman, Clayton and FTC acts which includes such concepts as market power. There is endless confusion about this simple fact: a monopolist need not control 100% of a market to violate anti-trust laws. Usually much less than that, less than 50% is not at all uncommon. What matters is breaking the law or not.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  30. Re:Red Hat screws up their implementaition of the by Ritz_Just_Ritz · · Score: 2

    Redhat's support is very selective these days. There is a clear imperative to more quickly support products that they can wrap a support contract around like RHEL. I understand that since they've got Wall Street to please, salaries to pay, etc., but it would not be a lot of extra effort to also support the free products in their ecosystem at a similar cadence. As a result, I have been weaning applications off Redhat products. The availability of support is great, but the vast majority of my applications don't require it so I've been leaning more towards the Debian ecosystem where my particular nits have been more quickly addressed and I don't feel like I'm going to be held hostage to ponying up for a support subscription to get a critical bug fix in a timely manner.

  31. Re:That'll show 'em by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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."

    Not sure how much Intel really cares about threats from the free Linux community - vs Microsoft, etc...

    Out of touch much? Intel now derives a large and expanding portion of its revenue from Linux servers, versus the shrinking Wintel market. Intel cares every much about its image in the Linux community, it is very easy to drive devs away to ARM and AMD. Intel has done a respectable job of keeping that brain drain under control and anything else would just be suicidal.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  32. Re:Zhaoxin by microbox · · Score: 3, Funny

    Backdoor for domestic police state? That would be China. At least the USA has structural separation between businesses (like Intel), and the government. And is a country of laws.

    --

    Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
  33. Re:kinda naive by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 4, Informative

    >you heard me. he may be a great programmer, but he doesn't know DICK about how hard it is to make a CPU

    Did you forget that Linus worked at Transmeta?

  34. Re:Don't like Linus; Agree with Linus; CEO s/b fir by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    It seems you're not clear on the details, actually.

    Literally any logical person can see that Intel's suck-it-and-see approach is terrible. AMD's (and everyone else's) engineers specifically addressed the issue by using the correct logic. That's not luck. That's called doing it right.

    Logical order of operations:
    1) Begin speculative execution
    2) Encounter ring-0 request
    3) Check for ring-0 permission
    4) Only allow speculative operation to be processed if permission is allowed
    Literally everyone but Intel does it this way because they're smarter than Intel.

    Intel's janky-ass order of operations:
    1) Begin speculative execution
    2) Encounter ring-0 request
    3) Allow request to be processed, no matter what
    4) When resolving branching, check if requester has ring-0 access and invalidate the results if not
    The trouble comes with: 3.5) Unprivileged requester inspects artifacts (registers, cache values, etc.) of processing prior to speculative branch resolution.

    The blame for this lays at the feet of Intel's engineers as much as anyone else. Granted, it's possible they found this a while ago and wanted to fix it, but were thwarted by management. Everybody knows that management sucks in every company, and they probably were the most recent roadblock to progress here. But this design got to production in the first place, and that's the engineers' fault.

  35. Re:That'll show 'em by jwhyche · · Score: 2

    What advantage are you talking about and what competitor? Do you mean AMD? I'm sure you do and yes you would be correct they have a slight advantage now but the funny thing is I don't see them running to exploit it. An advantage is nothing if you don't exploit it and that is just what I'm seeing AMD not do.

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    I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  36. Re:That'll show 'em by jwhyche · · Score: 2

    Out of touch much? Intel now derives a large and expanding portion of its revenue from Linux servers, versus the shrinking Wintel market

    From what I've been seeing over the last 10 years this observation matches what I've been seeing. Not just with intel but with server sales from Dell and IBM too.

    Back in 2008 I priced out 150 dell 2950 for a datacenter. The price automatically included a windows license for each server. It it took me 2 weeks to pound it through some thick skulls that we didn't want or going to pay the microsoft tax.

    I priced out a few dozen Dell servers a few years back. When I ordered them with Linux on them nobody batted a eye. It would come pre-installed for me. I, of course, thanked them for this service but informed them that I would be re-imaging them my self.

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    I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  37. Re:Zhaoxin by Aighearach · · Score: 2

    You might have misunderstood what you're citing, as being a monopoly is totally legal in the US and so Judges aren't generally ruling on that. There is probably a different thing, worded differently, that the ruling involved. Specifically, they were accused of being a type of monopoly that violates section 2 of the Sherman Act.

    First of all, rulings have context. The context of United States v. Alcoa that you cite was the aluminum market. It isn't presumed to be a one-size-fits-all answer. Certainly for businesses similar to aluminum manufacture, those types of numbers are considered relevant. Specifically, they found that Alcoa would substantially increase their own production capacity in anticipation of competition, and that they did so successfully in a way that prevented competitors from becoming established. The large capital investment required in the aluminum industry is very important to this.

    Compare that to Intel's situation, where they compete very hard but companies like ARM who don't own a single factory can not only compete, but dominate some niches. They're not going to measure Intel based on whatever accusation you make, Intel will respond pointing to the whole computer processor market, and the Court will have to accept some portion of that definition. Who the customer is, or if the product goes in your pocket or on your desk, those are not real differences that the court will take seriously as being separate markets. It isn't enough to show that there is a monopoly, you have to show a monopoly that harms competition. If competition requires a giant factory, then 90% market share is going to get you there for obvious reasons, but if no giant factory is required, and an office with a handful of engineers can actually design a new product and sell it just fine, then 90% would be meaningless.

    Like with Microsoft; having lots of market share wasn't the problem, competitors who failed to get access to that market due to behavior by Microsoft, in the context of microsoft's market share, was the problem. Compare that to Google's market share in their market; Google doesn't do anything to keep people out, their market partners aren't encouraged to sign lock-in agreements or anything. A company partnering with Google this year might partner with Bing next year, and they don't get punished in the market for that. So it doesn't matter how high Google's market share goes.

    Another thing the courts look at is if a monopoly is a natural monopoly or not. If it is natural, then they don't care. If you had to do things to create it, then they do care. If you're the only person who has Magic Foo Rocks on your land, because they only come from one place, and you therefore have 100% of the Magic Foo Rock market, you have a natural monopoly and it is totally legal. Lack of competition isn't something you did, it flows naturally from the nature of your business. Whereas if you go out and buy up all the Magic Foo Rock mines, and now own them all, then that is not a natural monopoly but a created one. A more common natural monopoly is utility delivery, where it is impractical to have multiple sets of water pipes going to homes, and the investment in new pipes only makes sense when there is a lack of existing pipes. In that sort of case, a monopoly is totally legal and doesn't harm competition. Note, however, that if prices are too high you can still have problems because it is illegal for monopolies to harm competition, or customers. The remedy for high prices would likely only be partial refunds, though, not substantial changes to business practices.

    Also, "80-90% of x86 CPUs" is like saying, "McDonalds has a monopoly on restaurants named McDonalds." Sure, it sounds good, but whatever "monopoly" means there, it doesn't mean any of the things talked about in the Sherman Act. Their market would include not only all the x86 CPUs, but also all the alternatives like ARM and MIPS. While it may be true that AMD's market share isn't enough to prevent Intel from being a monopoly, ARM's market share is easily enough to make it a joke. You'll be sitting there in a courtroom where most of the people in the room have an ARM CPU in their pocket, after all. Some lawyer will likely point that out.