Intel Plans To Release Chips That Have Built-in Meltdown and Spectre Protections Later This Year (businessinsider.com)
Intel plans to release chips that have built-in protections against the Spectre and Meltdown attacks later this year, company CEO Brian Krzanich said during company's quarterly earnings call this week. From a report: The company has "assigned some of our very best minds" to work on addressing the vulnerability that's exploited by those attacks, Krzanich said on a conference call following Intel's quarterly earnings announcement. That will result in "silicon-based" changes to the company's future chips, he said. "We've been working around clock" to address the vulnerability and attacks, Krzanich said. But, he added, "we're acutely aware we have more to do."
Personally I'm probably going to buy AMD for my next build. I've got an Ivy Bridge that's still serviceable enough, but now that 8-core chips have come down to mainstream prices and AMD doesn't have anemic performance compared to Intel for most workloads, I'm more than willing to give them my business. They should have their CPU lineup refreshed around April and I expect NVidia to start launching their newest line of Volta GPUs around that time as well so it's a good time to put together a new PC.
And of course, because they are serious about security, they won't be including the Intel Management Engine in computers that don't need it, RIGHT????? Fixing Meltdown and Spectre isn't news - everyone knew that they would jump on that one. But how about removing the bug-ridden, back-door infested Intel ME? THAT is what we should insist on every time they try to claim security credibility.
We don't need "built in protection" we need a "design which isn't vulnerable", if the former is truly their strategy then the analogue is anti-virus inside your CPU... You people who write headline need to stop playing into Intel PR's incredulous attitude to their own fucking design flaw. Meltdown and Spectre are not inevitable, they need to be designed out not paved over. Intel: stop treating everyone like morons or suffer the consequences.