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Intel Urges OEMs and End Users To Stop Deploying Spectre Patch As It May 'Introduce Higher Than Expected Reboots' (intel.com)

Posted by msmash on from the you-had-six-months dept.

Intel executive vice president Neil Shenoy said on Monday that the chip-maker has identified the source of some of the recent problems, so it is now recommended that users skip the available patches. From the blog post: We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors and end users stop deployment of current versions, as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior.

5 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Oh? by jawtheshark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You mean like, more than zero? Apart from a planned a kernel upgrade I never reboot. My systems also don’t reboot spontaneously.

    --
    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
  2. Intel has known about the vuln for almost 7 months by Hadlock · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did they just roll out a patch in the last 30 days, or what's going on over there? This is the kind of instability one would expect from a hastily produced patch developed over a month by a small team. According to reports, Intel has known about the vuln for 7+ months. Were they not working on a patch this whole time? I would assume they were on iteration 5 or 6 of the patch by the time they broke the embargo a week early.

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    moox. for a new generation.
  3. Re:Higher than... what? by PingSpike · · Score: 5, Funny

    Its like how a car with a rusted out brake lines has a higher than expected number air bag deployments. You expected zero but Intel has exceeded all expectations once again.

  4. Looking forward to Linus's response... by forkfail · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... to Intel's announcement.

    Especially given what he had to say about the patches in the first place:

    http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/l...

    --
    Check your premises.
  5. He should have just said... by Andrew+Lindh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "We recommend everyone stop deployment of Intel CPUs". Higher than expected reboots? More than 1 to install the update? The root cause is design flaws and inadequate testing of major low level patches. Google new about these issues months ago and Intel did (or should have) too. They rushed the release so the stock price does not tank not because it was ready. They normally take many months or years to test these design changes or updates and now it will be a long time before they have new CPUs that don't need fixes (or at least these fixes). May be they should have worked around the clock months ago when they did not need to be rushed.