Wednesday, January 3rd 2018
AMD Struggles to Be Excluded from Unwarranted Intel VT Flaw Kernel Patches
Intel is secretly firefighting a major hardware security vulnerability affecting its entire x86 processor lineup. The hardware-level vulnerability allows unauthorized memory access between two virtual machines (VMs) running on a physical machine, due to Intel's flawed implementation of its hardware-level virtualization instruction sets. OS kernel-level software patches to mitigate this vulnerability, come at huge performance costs that strike at the very economics of choosing Intel processors in large-scale datacenters and cloud-computing providers, over processors from AMD. Ryzen, Opteron, and EPYC processors are inherently immune to this vulnerability, yet the kernel patches seem to impact performance of both AMD and Intel processors.
Close inspection of kernel patches reveal code that forces machines running all x86 processors, Intel or AMD, to be patched, regardless of the fact that AMD processors are immune. Older commits to the Linux kernel git, which should feature the line "if (c->x86_vendor != X86_VENDOR_AMD)" (condition that the processor should be flagged "X86_BUG_CPU_INSECURE" only if it's not an AMD processor), have been replaced with the line "/* Assume for now that ALL x86 CPUs are insecure */" with no further accepted commits in the past 10 days. This shows that AMD's requests are being turned down by Kernel developers. Their intentions are questionable in the wake of proof that AMD processors are immune, given that patched software inflicts performance penalties on both Intel and AMD processors creating a crony "level playing field," even if the latter doesn't warrant a patch. Ideally, AMD should push to be excluded from this patch, and offer to demonstrate the invulnerability of its processors to Intel's mess.
Source:
Phoronix Forums
Close inspection of kernel patches reveal code that forces machines running all x86 processors, Intel or AMD, to be patched, regardless of the fact that AMD processors are immune. Older commits to the Linux kernel git, which should feature the line "if (c->x86_vendor != X86_VENDOR_AMD)" (condition that the processor should be flagged "X86_BUG_CPU_INSECURE" only if it's not an AMD processor), have been replaced with the line "/* Assume for now that ALL x86 CPUs are insecure */" with no further accepted commits in the past 10 days. This shows that AMD's requests are being turned down by Kernel developers. Their intentions are questionable in the wake of proof that AMD processors are immune, given that patched software inflicts performance penalties on both Intel and AMD processors creating a crony "level playing field," even if the latter doesn't warrant a patch. Ideally, AMD should push to be excluded from this patch, and offer to demonstrate the invulnerability of its processors to Intel's mess.
142 Comments on AMD Struggles to Be Excluded from Unwarranted Intel VT Flaw Kernel Patches
....Amd can soooo capitalize on this......after they figure out how to not take a hit by it....
It
a.) does not leak kernel memory, simply reboots the target system (this is the "bad things that'll happen")
b.) is fixed in epyc and TR solutions
And to think, 64-Core flavors are on the way...
AMD has definitely made some bad business decisions and when you don't have as much resources in terms of money, fabs etc, the consequences of a bad decision is going to be more severe. I think it's a combination of this and Intel's dirty tricks against them which has lead to the current dominance of Intel over them. In fact, I seem to remember from that history that AMD were the underdog to Intel most of the time, right back to the early 70s.
And before anyone challenges me on this, no, I don't have reams of evidence of these dirty tricks by Intel, lol. It's just my opinion over reading many articles about these two over the years.What, AMD aren't whiter than white? I'm shocked! :eek: Some people seem to think they are though and start to make excuses for them about their underperforming products, which tends to cause arguments in the forum. I dunno why people do this for companies who are just out to make a profit any way they can and have no loyalty to them whatsoever. And of course, AMD haven't paid for these people to shill for them...
EDIT: Ah, Intel. NVM.
So how bad is it?
You're basically saying, that because the blueprints to a handgun are available, I should've been worried that people in their homes will start 3d-printing them. Yes, that eventually happened, but it required a bit more than blueprints, and yes it did signifigantly increase the number of unregistered people with access to firearms...
Also there's possibly more than one exploit (uncovered) out there.
This is just a reminder that the status quo we have today, with 2 companies with their own products, is a fairly new one.
So the short answer for
"Can you imagine how much better and cheaper these products would be if both companies had been equal competitors all this time?"
is: there would most likely be no AMD today. :-)Some?!
Losing fabs and money was one of their decisions. They wanted to be like Apple - just designing stuff, innovating.
But earlier they had the manufacturing, they had the tech, they had a client base. They had everything.
15 years ago I just loved AMD. Everyone did. We were not fanboys in modern meaning (as in: blind Intel haters), but we believed in this company.
When they bought ATI, people were like "WOW - they'll make a closed PC ecosystem! Or a console!". This was an amazing idea! But nothing like that happened.
10 years later people still highlight the advantage AMD has - making both high-end CPUs and GPUs - but these are just parts. You make a CPU and a GPU and you can sell them for $100 each. But if you add a cheap mobo and a plastic case, you can charge $400 for the whole set.
People also like to say that AMD makes chips for most consoles. But if they decided to make their own console in 2007, they would most likely take the second place behind Sony PS (while still making GPUs for them as well :-)).
AMDs total revenue (so GPU+CPU) for 2016 was 4.3 bln USD. Cute.
PlayStation revenue was 14.7 bln USD.
XBOX revenue is not official, but should be around 5-6 bln USD.
So effectively, in the end, the best move they did (buying ATI) became their worse one.AMD was not the underdog to Intel. Intel basically owned them and supported their development. But they let them lose and suddenly it was too late. AMD learned a lot, quickly became the second-largest CPU manufacturer and now regulators won't agree on a takeover (just the GPU part is another story :-)).
Think about it next time you'll have the idea that government is on Intel's side and is slowing AMD down. :-P