Considering the performance impact, I wonder how console manufacturers are going to handle this (assuming that the processors they used are vulnerable to Spectre/Meltdown).
It could be still a problem though, considering many console games use all kinds of hacks to barely run at the target resolution/framerate.
None of these is vulnerable to Meltdown. That is an Intel/Apple/ARM Cortex A75 only thing.
Do you mean Spectre? Meltdown is the Variant 3 in that link.
> It affects WAY more ARM processors than A75. All the fast ARM cores ...
The ARM cores listed on that page are not all the ARM cores in the market (or running in the real-world). There are many more ARM cores than listen in that table, and the page says any ARM core not listed in that table is not vulnerable to any variant of Meltdown or Spectre.
If you had to slow down any of the consoles by 10% there would be tons of problems in the games. As you said, those games are highly tweaked to just barely run on those CPUs/GPUs.
In other words, if I visit a site like Google or Facebook on an affected device, I can change the JavaScript that is run, and make it still appear like it came from a trusted domain.
I imagine they are more concerned about game authors snooping keys or whatnot.
In addition they do have a store with indie games which seems to be more or less open to anyone (I assume there are some checks but I wouldn't trust them completely) much like Steam.
And in any case the Meltdown patch is not too bad for games.
The Switch appears to be based on ARM cores that are vulnerable.