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Microsoft Pauses Rollout of Spectre and Meltdown Patches To AMD Systems (betanews.com)

Microsoft is suspending patches to guard against Meltdown and Spectre security threats for computers running AMD chipsets after complaints by AMD customers that the software updates froze their machines. From a report: The company is blaming AMD's failure to comply with "the documentation previously provided to Microsoft to develop the Windows operating system mitigations to protect against the chipset vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown." There's no word on when the patches will be fixed, but Microsoft says that it is working with AMD to address the problem.

3 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. AMD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, the problem is that AMD failed to comply with the documentation for the Intel bug? Perhaps "failed to comply" is just MS-speak for "failed to implement the bug"...

  2. Re: Why Meldown? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    On the Linux side, didn't Intel supply much of the Meltdown mitigation, pushing it on all CPUs? And then AMD had to add a patch to exempt their processors?

    Wouldn't be surprised if Intel did a lot of the behind-the-scenes work for Microsoft here, and they just sort of accepted it without sufficient testing.

  3. Re:Why Meldown? by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Because its not called "Wintel" for nothing? Remember this is the same company that royally fucked their own flagship OS just to allow good buddy Intel to sell a bunch of garbage 945 chipsets with the "Vista Capable" fiasco, I seriously would not be surprised if Intel picked up the phone and said "You damned well better fuck AMD with this patch as much as we are getting fucked".

    Never let it be said that old Hairy don't give credit where credit is due and in this case the Linux guys have it better as no less than Torvalds himself said that Linux shouldn't treat all CPUs (meaning ARM and AMD) as crap so I seriously doubt Linux users with AMD have a thing to worry about when it comes to the meltdown patches, it'll be us Windows users that will be going to forums and looking for .bat files or reg keys that will kill the meltdown patch on our AMD systems.

    Oh and on a personal note as someone who stuck with AMD FX while everyone was singing the praises of Intel (and still quite happy with my FX-8320e as even my games run buttery smooth at an average of 90 FPS+ while recording gameplay footage) I would be lying if I said it didn't give me a bit of a smile to see Intel getting bit right in the backside after their years of cripple compilers and bribing OEMs, the only thing that could make it more delicious would be if it turns out that Intel chips get a performance hit equal to what the cripple compiler did to AMD systems. Man would that not be some delectable irony?

    --
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