Microsoft late-Monday halted Meltdown and Spectre security patches to machines running AMD processors, as complaints of machines turning unbootable piled up. Apparently the latest KB4056892 (2018-01) Cumulative Update causes machines with AMD processors (well, chipsets) to refuse to boot. Microsoft has halted distributing patches to PCs running AMD processors, and issued a statement on the matter. In this statement, Microsoft blames AMD for not supplying its engineers with the right documentation to develop their patches (while absolving itself of any blame for not testing its patches on actual AMD-powered machines before releasing them).

"Microsoft has reports of customers with some AMD devices getting into an unbootable state after installing recent Windows operating system security updates," said Microsoft in its statement. "After investigating, Microsoft has determined that some AMD chipsets do not conform to the documentation previously provided to Microsoft to develop the Windows operating system mitigations to protect against the chipset vulnerabilities known as Spectre and Meltdown," it added. Microsoft is working with AMD to re-develop, test, and release security updates, on the double.Update (09/01): AMD responded to this story, its statement posted verbatim is as follows.

Acer today announced its new Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop, designed for casual gamers seeking great performance in an attractive laser-textured design. Powered by Windows 10, the new 15-inch laptop is targeted towards mainstream users who enjoy the thrill of gaming with friends, and building their own network of like-minded players.

"With performance to effortlessly power mainstream titles, the Acer Nitro 5 houses essential technologies that casual gamers value most," said Jerry Hou, General Manager, Consumer Notebooks, IT Products Business, Acer Inc. "We've developed the Nitro 5 knowing that gamers want powerful specs to enable great experiences on the go. The new Nitro 5 is designed to tackle these needs and features a striking exterior for added uniqueness."

Here are some of the first pictures of GIGABYTE Aorus X470 Gaming 7 WiFi, one of the first socket AM4 motherboards based on the upcoming AMD X470 chipset, which will launch with out of the box support for 2nd generation Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge" and Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APUs, in addition to current-gen Ryzen chips, when it launches early-Q2 (April). The presence of more than one 32 Gbps M.2 slot bodes well, as it confirms that the chipset features PCI-Express gen 3.0 general purpose lanes (current AMD 300-series chipset have gen 2.0). One can also spy three x16 slots, from which two will be wired to the CPU, with SLI support; and the board's overall design scheme matching that of the company's Intel 300-series chipset motherboards.

MSI, a world leader in gaming hardware, launches three brand-new gaming products at CES 2018, and will display two other CES Innovation Award Honorees. The CES 2018 Innovation Award Honorees include the Trident 3 Arctic, the new Z370 GODLIKE GAMING motherboard, new GTX 1080TI Lightning Graphics Card, Infinite X gaming desktop and new Optix MPG27CQ gaming monitor. The Trident 3 Arctic was also awarded a "Best of Innovation at Gaming" award. With these products, MSI affirms its position at the head of the high-end gaming market, bringing gamers all over the world the latest and greatest technologies.

"MSI has been dedicated to the field of gaming and is highly acclaimed by gamers and eSports teams worldwide," said Eric Kuo, MSI Vice President of Global Sales & Marketing. "We are honored to receive award recognition for these products and are excited to share them with gamers everywhere."

AMD at CES shed some light on its 2018 roadmap, while taking the opportunity to further shed some light on its graphics and CPU projects up to 2020. Part of their 2018 roadmap was the company's already announced, across the board price-cuts for their first generation Ryzen processors. This move aims to increase competitiveness of its CPU offerings against rival Intel - thus taking advantage of the blue giant's currently weakened position due to the exploit saga we've been covering. This move should also enable inventory clearings of first-gen Ryzen processors - soon to be supplanted by the new Zen+ 12 nm offerings, which are expected to receive a 10% boost to power efficiency from the process shrink alone, while also including some specific improvements in optimizing their performance per watt profile. These are further bound to see their market introduction in March, and are already in the process of sampling.

On the CPU side, AMD's 2018 roadmap further points towards a Threadripper and Ryzen Pro refresh in the 2H 2018, likely in the same vein as their consumer CPUs that we just talked about. On the graphics side of their 2018 roadmap, AMD focused user's attention in the introduction of premium Vega offerings in the mobile space (with HBM2 memory integration on interposer, as well), which should enable the company to compete against NVIDIA in the discrete graphics space for mobile computers. Another very interesting tidbit announced by AMD is that they would be skipping the 12 nm process for their graphics products entirely; the company announced that it will begin sampling of 7 nm Vega products to its partners, but only on the Instinct product line of machine learning accelerators. We consumers will likely have to wait a little while longer until we see some 7 nm graphics cards from AMD.

Following its Ryzen 5 2400G and Ryzen 3 2200G socket AM4 APU announcement, AMD announced price cuts for its Ryzen family of processors, across the board. These are official price cuts, and not seasonal retailer discounts. The price cuts have been made in a bid to make its existing socket AM4 Ryzen processors more competitive against 8th generation Intel Core "Coffee Lake" processors.

Among the notable changes, are bringing the entire Ryzen 7-series lineup under the $350-mark, with the 1800X being priced at $349, the 1700X at $309, and the 1700 non-X at $299. These changes make the three competitive against the Core i7-8700K (which is scraping the $400-mark in many places), and the i7-8700 non-K (around $330). The Ryzen 5-series six-core parts also receive much-needed price-cuts to make them competitive against the Core i5 six-core SKUs, such as the i5-8600K and i5-8400. There are marginal changes in the Ryzen 3 series and Ryzen Threadripper series. All price cuts are tabled below.

Building on the global enthusiasm generated in 2017 by Ryzen processors and Radeon graphics technology, AMD today detailed its forthcoming roll-out plan for its new and next generation of high-performance computing and graphics products during an event in Las Vegas just prior to the opening of CES 2018. Alongside announcing the first desktop Ryzen processors with built-in Radeon Vega Graphics, AMD also detailed the full line up of Ryzen mobile APUs including the new Ryzen PRO and Ryzen 3 models, and provided a first look at the performance of its upcoming 12nm 2nd generation Ryzen desktop CPU expected to launch in April. In graphics, AMD announced the expansion of the "Vega" family with Radeon Vega Mobile and that its first 7nm product is planned to be a Radeon "Vega" GPU specifically built for machine learning applications.

"We successfully accomplished the ambitious goals we set for ourselves in 2017, reestablishing AMD as a high-performance computing leader with the introduction and ramp of 10 different product families," said AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. "We are building on this momentum in 2018 as we make our strongest product portfolio of the last decade even stronger with new CPUs and GPUs that bring more features and more performance to a broad set of markets."

ASRock today unveiled the industry's first micro-ATX form-factor motherboard for AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors, the X399M Taichi. The board supports a full-featured Threadripper HEDT build. Drawing power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors, it uses an 8-phase VRM to power the CPU. MOSFETs of this VRM vent heat onto both a smaller primary heatsink, and a larger secondary heatsink, via a heat-pipe. The TR4 socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots, supporting quad-channel DDR4 memory; and three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (from which at least two run at full x16 bandwidth at all times).

Storage connectivity on the ASRock X399M Taichi includes three 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, one 32 Gb/s U.2 port, and eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Networking connectivity includes 802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.x WLAN, and two 1 GbE interfaces. USB connectivity includes eight USB 3.0 and two USB 3.1 (including a type-C) ports on the rear panel, and four USB 3.0 ports via headers. ASRock deployed its highest-grade onboard audio solution, which takes advantage of a 120 dBA SNR CODEC, audio-grade capacitors, and ground-layer isolation. The company will showcase this board at the 2018 International CES.

Making good on its post-New Year promise, AMD late Thursday released its first Radeon Software Adrenalin iteration for the year, version 18.1.1 Alpha. Being flagged "Alpha," these are very early drivers, the use of which are not backed by any warranties. They're not fully tested to work by AMD.

Version 18.1.1 Alpha addresses critical bugs that caused some of the older games to break following Adrenalin 17.12 release. The games, which are nearly a decade old, are AAA blockbusters which are based on the older DirectX 9 API. A number of older DirectX 9 games, such as EA's "Command & Conquer 3," "Command & Conquer 4" series, "Battle for Middle Earth 1-2," and "The Witcher Enhanced Edition" had simply refused to start following the 17.12 driver update. Grab the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 18.1.1 Alpha

After Intel and AMD's differing statements on the same issue, now is the time for Google, ARM, and Microsoft to release statements regarding the recently discovered (and still in the spotlight) security flaws that impact almost all Intel CPUs from the last decade. Google is the company that originally alerted Intel to the existence of the security vulnerabilities, and mentioned some reservations regarding AMD and ARM's immunity as well. Microsoft, as the maker of the world's most recognized and widely-used OS, has also issued a statement. The ARM statement follows, with both Google and Microsoft's statements transcribed after the break.

ARM
This method requires malware running locally and could result in data being accessed from privileged memory. Our Cortex-M processors, which are pervasive in low-power, connected IoT devices, are not impacted.

There is more clarity on when AMD plans to launch its 2nd generation Ryzen "Pinnacle Ridge" processors, along with companion 400-series chipsets. Retailers in Japan, citing upstream suppliers, expect AMD to launch Ryzen # 2000-series (or "Ryzen 2") processors in March 2018, along with two motherboard chipset models, the top-tier AMD X470, and the mid-range AMD B450. An older report pegged this launch at February. The two chipsets are differentiated from their current-generation 300-series counterparts in featuring PCI-Express gen 3.0 general purpose lanes. The "Pinnacle Ridge" processors, on the other hand, are expected to be optical-shrinks of current Ryzen "Summit Ridge" silicon to the new 12 nm silicon fabrication process, which will allow AMD to increase clock speeds with minimal impact on power-draw.

AMD Ryzen 2 "Pinnacle Ridge" processors will be built in the existing socket AM4 package, and are expected to be compatible with existing socket AM4 motherboards, subject to BIOS updates by motherboard manufacturers. AMD plans to nurture the socket AM4 ecosystem till 2020. Future motherboards based on AMD 400-series chipsets could also feature compatibility with existing "Summit Ridge" Ryzen processors. These motherboards will come with out of the box support for Ryzen "Raven Ridge" APUs, something that requires BIOS updates on current 300-series chipset motherboards.

MSI, one of the world leading motherboard developers, is pleased to introduce the new Mini-ITX B350I PRO AC motherboard, ready for AMD SocketAM4 and the latest RYZEN processors. Building a small form factor PC, whether it's for professional, multimedia or gaming use, has never been more interesting on the AM4 platform with this comprehensive, feature packed solution.

A strong 9-phase PWM design (6+2+1), unseen on any AM4 Mini-ITX motherboard, the use of Military Class components and inclusion of DDR4 Boost, ensures a perfectly stable system under any condition with top performance. It also features DisplayPort, a HDMI output and 2x pin headers for RGB strips.The new B350I PRO AC even comes with Mystic Light, allowing anyone to change the system LED colors while applying lighting effects.

There has been recent press coverage regarding a potential security issue related to modern microprocessors and speculative execution. Information security is a priority at AMD, and our security architects follow the technology ecosystem closely for new threats. It is important to understand how the speculative execution vulnerability described in the research relates to AMD products, but please keep in mind the following:

• The research described was performed in a controlled, dedicated lab environment by a highly knowledgeable team with detailed, non-public information about the processors targeted.
• The described threat has not been seen in the public domain.

Intel tried desperately in a press note late Wednesday to brush aside allegations that the recent hardware security-vulnerability are a "bug" or a "flaw," and that the media is exaggerating the issue, notwithstanding the facts that the vulnerability only affects Intel x86 processors and not AMD x86 processors (despite the attempt to make it appear in the press-release as if the vulnerability is widespread among other CPU vendors such as AMD and ARM by simply throwing their brand names into the text); notwithstanding the fact that Intel, Linux kernel lead developers with questionable intentions, and other OS vendors such as Microsoft are keeping their correspondence under embargoes and their Linux kernel update mechanism is less than transparent; notwithstanding the fact that Intel shares are on a slump at the expense of AMD and NVIDIA shares, and CEO Brian Kraznich sold a lot of Intel stock while Intel was secretly firefighting this issue.

The exploits, titled "Meltdown," is rather glaring to be a simple vulnerability, and is described by the people who discovered it, as a bug. Apparently, it lets software running on one virtual machine (VM) access data of another VM, which hits at the very foundations of cloud-computing (integrity and security of virtual machines), and keeps customers wanting cost-effective cloud services at bay. It critically affects the very business models of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Alibaba, some of the world's largest cloud computing providers; and strikes at the economics of choosing Intel processors over AMD, in cloud-computing data centers, since the software patches that mitigate the vulnerability, if implemented ethically, significantly reduce performance of machines running Intel processors and not machines running AMD processors (that don't require the patch in the first place). You can read Intel's goalpost-shifting masterpiece after the break.

Intel's stock pricing has taken a 6.19% dip at time of writing, in a regress that analysts say has everything to do with the reported VT flaw in Intel's central processing units. The flaw, which Intel has been silently firefighting and which we've covered extensively here on TPU, is a hardware-level vulnerability which has the potential to allow 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. Kernel patches are already being deployed that mitigate the issue; however, these should incur in performance losses for Intel processors, and are being deployed in an apparent "spray and pray" method that also affects performance in AMD-based machines, which are expected to be immune to the Intel flaw.

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.

There are ominous signs that Intel may be secretly fixing a major security vulnerability affecting its processors, which threatens to severely damage its brand equity among datacenter and cloud-computing customers. The vulnerability lets users of a virtual machine (VM) access data of another VM on the same physical machine (a memory leak). Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are among the big three cloud providers affected by this vulnerability, and Intel is reportedly in embargoed communications with engineers from the three, to release a software patch that fixes the bug. Trouble is, the patch inflicts an unavoidable performance penalty ranging between 30-35%, impacting the economics of using Intel processors versus AMD ones.

Signs of Intel secretly fixing the bug surfaced with rapid changes to the Linux kernel without proper public-visibility of the documentation. The bulk of the changes involve "kernel page table isolation," a feature that prevents VMs from reading each other's data, but at performance costs. Developers note that these changes are being introduced "very fast" by Linux kernel update standards, and even being backported to older kernel versions (something that's extremely rare). Since this is a hardware vulnerability, Linux isn't the only vulnerable software platform. Microsoft has been working on a Windows kernel patch for this issue since November 2017. AMD x86 processors (such as Opteron, Ryzen, EPYC, etc.,) are immune to this vulnerability.

Right in the last corner of 2017, as our collective minds were getting ready to move onto a new year at full warp speed, we covered this bit of news regarding AMD's Adrenalin Driver incompatibility with some older game titles under DX9 ("C&C3 Tiberium Wars," "C&C3 Kane's Wrath," "C&C Red Alert 3," "C&C Red Alert 3 Uprising," "C&C4 Tiberian Twilight," "Battle for Middle Earth 1-2," and "The Witcher Enhanced Edition.") At the time, AMD stated that they were "unlikely to devote any valuable engineering resources to this issue." User backlash ensued, and with the new year comes a new AMD: one that has found the valuable engineering resources needed towards working on a fix for said issues.

Apparently, the problem stemmed from a driver-level incompatibility with SAGE engine games, and AMD's Terry Makedon took to Twitter to make things better for fans of those games, saying that "We will for sure fix this bug with SAGE engine games in an upcoming hotfix." All in all, a good guy move by AMD. For sure, the initial statement might not echo the full sentiment of the entire company on the issue, though it's a fact that it was an AMD employee that started the whole debate. That said, the user backlash certainly goes to show that PC gamers want their systems to always have backwards compatibility with older games - one of the more important differentiating factors between PCs and games consoles.

ASUS today introduced the ProArt PA27AC monitor that meets displayHDR 400 standards. This 27-inch monitor features an IPS display panel with WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels) native resolution, and covers 100% of the sRGB color-space with its 8bpc color depth. The monitor meets VESA's displayHDR 400 standard, with a peak luminescence of 400 nits, 8bpc image quality, and standard dynamic mega contrast dimming. The PA27AC also offers support for AMD FreeSync technology. Other vital specs include 60 Hz refresh-rate, and 5 ms (GTG) response time. The monitor takes input from DisplayPort 1.2a (needed for FreeSync), HDMI 2.0, and HDMI 1.4. The DisplayPort interface is USB type-C, and supports Thunderbolt 3 daisy-chaining (one port in, one out). The company didn't reveal pricing.

Intel revealed specifications of its upcoming "Kaby Lake + AMD Vega" multi-chip module, the Core i7-8809G, on its website. A number of these specs were already sniffed out by Futuremark SystemInfo, but the website sheds light on a key feature - dual integrated graphics. The specs sheet confirms that the chip combines a 4-core/8-thread "Kaby Lake" CPU die with an AMD Radeon RX Vega M GH graphics die. The CPU is clocked at 3.10 GHz, and SystemInfo (from the older story) confirmed that its Turbo Boost frequency is up to 3.90 GHz. The L3 cache amount is maxed out a 8 MB. The reference memory clock is set at dual-channel DDR4-2400. What's more, the CPU component features an unlocked base-clock multiplier.

Things get interesting with the way Intel describes its integrated graphics solution. It mentions both the star-attraction, the AMD Radeon RX Vega M GH, and the Intel HD Graphics 630 located on the "Kaby Lake" CPU die. This indicates that Intel could deploy a mixed multi-GPU solution that's transparent to software, balancing graphics loads between the HD 630 and RX Vega M GH, depending on the load and thermal conditions. Speaking of which, Intel has rated the TDP of the MCM at 100W, with a rider stating "target package TDP," since there's no scientifically-correct way of measuring TDP on a multi-chip module. Intel could build performance-segment NUCs with this chip, in addition to selling them to mini-PC manufacturers.

AMD ended 2017 with its year-end mega driver release, the Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition (17.12), which introduced a large number of new features. The drivers, incidentally, also inadvertently caused bugs with some 10-year old games running on the older DirectX 9 API. When AMD Radeon users took to Reddit, and other tech forums to report these issues, AMD responded on its official support forums that it is "unlikely to devote any valuable engineering resources to this issue."

Among the games affected, old as they may seem, are AAA blockbusters, including "C&C3 Tiberium Wars," "C&C3 Kane's Wrath," "C&C Red Alert 3," "C&C Red Alert 3 Upising," "C&C4 Tiberian Twilight," "Battle for Middle Earth 1-2," and "The Witcher Enhanced Edition." AMD blames its inability to fix these issues to outdated API models. The company's full statement reads "This title is from 2007, so we are unlikely to devote any valuable engineering resources to this issue, which is most likely caused by outdated API modules."

HWiNFO v. 5.7 has brought with it a smattering of improvements and additions, as is usually the case. These are worthier of a news piece than most, however, since we're looking at quite a number of interesting developments. For one, preliminary support has been added for Intel's Whiskey Lake, an upcoming mobile design that succeed's Intel's Kaby Lake products, and should bring the fight to AMD's Ryzen Mobile offerings. Furthermore, and still on the Intel camp, support for the upcoming 10 nm Ice Lake has also been added. Íf you'll remember, Ice Lake is expected to be Intel's first foray into the 10 nm+ process in the mobile camp (given away by the U/Y product codes), after numerous delays that made the company stick with its 14 nm process through three iterations and in-process improvements. These are not the only Intel developments, however; the team behind HWiNFO has also added a new feature that reveals your Intel CPU's Turbo Boost multipliers, which the company has since removed form their ARK pages and processor specifications - an issue that generated rivers of ink.

Stepping away from the blue giant's camp, there's added support for AMD's next revision of their Ryzen processors (Pinnacle Ridge, on a 12 nm process). There's also mention of upcoming support for AMD's 400-series chipsets, which should improve platform features of the AM4 socket. This addition comes after we've seen its first appearance in the PCI-SIG Integrators List.

AMD's second-generation Ryzen processors, which debut some time in Q1-2018, will be accompanied by the company's new 400-series motherboard chipset, even though they are expected to work with existing socket AM4 motherboards based on 300-series chipsets (with BIOS updates). The 400-series Promontory chipset surfaced on the PCIe Integrators List of PCI-SIG, the standards governing body of the PCI bus (which also oversees PCIe specifications development).

The listing seems to confirm that 400-series chipset will feature PCI-Express gen 3.0 general purpose lanes. These are downstream PCIe lanes put out by the chipset, to run the various external onboard controllers on the motherboard, and usually wired to the x1 and x4 PCIe slots. The current 300-series chipset only features up to 8 PCIe gen 2.0 general purpose lanes, and that was seen as a drawback. AMD Ryzen socket AM4 processors put out additional gen 3.0 lanes besides the 16 lanes allocated to PEG (one x16 or two x8, physically x16 slots); and 4 lanes serving as chipset bus. These additional gen 3.0 lanes typically drive a 32 Gb/s M.2 slot. With 400-series chipset bringing gen 3.0 general purpose lanes, one can expect newer socket AM4 motherboards with more than one 32 Gb/s M.2 slot (one from the SoC, another from the chipset).

Arctic Cooling has introduced a new tower cooler solution for your CPU of choice. Silently shared on their website, the Freezer 33 eSports One exudes the conventional "gaming" aesthetic of black and red, with a black, 49-fin-stack array, and your choice of a 120 mm black, yellow, green, or white Bionix fan. Arctic says the eSports one is good for CPUs with TDPs up to 200 W, placing this heat dissipation capability on a new thermal coating technology that creates microturbulences, increasing the amount of heatsink area that's engaged in the cooling efficiency of the eSports One. There's also direct heatpipe technology with an offset design, and Arctic says that the heatpipes being centered on the die, instead of covering the entire surface are, delivers maximum cooling performance.

AMD released the AMDVLK drivers for Linux. These are the first open-source AMD Radeon graphics drivers featuring 100% support for Vulkan 1.0 graphics API. The drivers include Vulkan 1.0 compliance with support for 30 Vulkan extensions, Radeon GPU Profiler support, in-built debug and profiling tools, mid-command buffer preemption, and SR-IOV virtualization support. AMDVLK implements AMD's Platform Abstraction Library (PAL), an abstraction layer that translates much of AMD's common driver code and features across platforms. The drivers support all AMD Radeon GPUs based on the Graphics CoreNext architecture, going all the way back to the Radeon HD 7000-series. The drivers are released through AMD's GPUOpen GitHub repository.