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Comment by quantummkv | Hacker News Reader

Unless you are building a server, it does not matter. Your GPU handles a lot of desktop heavy workloads such as gaming. If you are building servers or a machine for CPU intensive tasks such as compiling chromium every hour, then you might want to look at AMD. The major performance hits are caused by meltdown patches that do not affect AMD. And the amount of cores they give certainly help in these workloads.

Fixing these bugs at CPU level will require changes in architectures. Such sweeping changes won't come for years. Intel has not made such a overhaul in years and AMD just made one.

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> Unless you are building a server, it does not matter

The average HN user is not the typical desktop/laptop user. I bet we use virtual machines, compilers, technologies like nvme, databases (postgres/mysql)... more often than the typical desktop/laptop user.

Yes, we do. But I doubt anyone is using them for production workloads. Development workloads don't continuously push cpu to 100% or even 70% for large periods of time. Development workloads don't make 1000 req/sec on postgres. No one has 10 vm's running at a time on a desktop.

These perf issues will only affect the server and cloud providers or some edge cases on the desktop. Everyone else can just apply the patches and go to work.

You are probably right although C++ compilation can use a fair bit of processor, especially with parallel compilation (e.g. Qt jom). Not sure how frequent system calls are though.

C/C++ compilations typically read and write a zillion different tiny files and even if they happen totally in memory buffer they'll still do a hell a lot of system calls.

I think parallel compilation is going to be hit the most. On my VS2017 with the latest MSVC and C++17, and a moderate C++ project (very few units, only about 100 files and so many constexpr and TMP) with multi core compilation enabled, plus a E5-2660, I have a record of 10% penalty(originally a minute) in build time after clean-and-rebuild. Haven’t tested with IncrediBuild tho, but my paralleled webpack production build seems to offer the same outcome. 30 secs to 36 secs. Both of which is not that really mattered I’d say. I’m using Windows 10 with KB4056892.

> The average HN user is not the typical desktop/laptop user.

Maybe so, maybe not. Personnaly I have the hunch that most HN users use the same setup as the typical desktop/laptop users.

They might have the same macbook pro, but it might not be a dedicated email/youtube machine.

Maybe, maybe not on their personal computer. Their families' machines are a different story.

Well, iam not.

Also i do not host critical production machines, but some web and database server. I wonder how the "i host some stuff on the internets" guy is affected by this stuff.

Quite. If Intel, AMD, and ARM just slam in fixes now and release as soon as they can, assuming that's even possible, there's a significant chance they'll introduce other security problems. To gain a high degree of confidence that hasn't happened will most likely require extensive design iteration, verification, and testing so, yeah, years unfortunately.

> Your GPU handles a lot of desktop heavy workloads such as gaming.

Depends on a game, though. While true in most cases, one of my favourites - Kerbal Space Program - is heavily CPU-bound due to being mostly a real-time physics simulation.

There are certainly exceptions. But most games aren't like Dwarf Fortress.

Even some games you might not expect could be in there. Guild Wars 2, for example, consistently uses the vast majority of my cpu.

Also, Valve's source engine is known for being relatively cpu-bound (compared to other engines).

Looks like Intel is already out with a patch for Meltdown: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/4/16850776/intel-meltdown-sp...

A microcode update, which simply enables some previously disabled features, that allow you to workaround the problem (ie. by clearing the branch prediction buffer). The hardware is still most definitely vulnerable to both Meltdown and Spectre, and will require software workarounds to hide the problems, which in turn will cause lower performance.

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