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zaarn

*For the datacenter.

There doesn't seem to be a concrete plan for consumer chips.

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Actually they say 8th generation Core.

I guess there is nothing that can be done about existing processors.

Perhaps a bit of a dark thought, but fixing existing processors means you might not buy their new 'fixed' processor.

As a result they are not that motivated to fix it as well as they should.

I am reading about microcode updates, but I'm wondering if Dell doesn't update the BIOS for my (early Core i3, admittedly pretty old) computer am I SOL regardless of what Intel does?

The microcode updates can also be loaded via your OS if they are not installed via a firmware update. This happens before the OS itself is loaded early on in the boot stage.

See [0] for Linux and possibly [1] for Windows. Not 100% sure if Windows does handle this via Windows Updates or not.

[0] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Intel_microcode

[1] http://www.overclock.net/forum/5-intel-cpus/1633419-how-upda...

The article says

> "Meanwhile for updating Intel’s consumer chips, this is a bit more nebulous"

And then says why it's still ambiguous where that leaves non-DC users

I'm not exactly sure what's more "nebulous" about the timing for consumer chips. This timing is specified for both the consumer and server chips in the same sentence in the press release: "These changes will begin with our next-generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors (code-named Cascade Lake) as well as 8th Generation Intel® Core™ processors expected to ship in the second half of 2018." (I guess the nebulous thing is exactly which 8th generation Cores will have the update.)

I guess the nebulous thing is exactly which 8th generation Cores will have the update.

Indeed. Plenty of 8th gen processors have already shipped so it won't be easy to tell which ones are fixed. Also, 8th gen includes Kaby Lake-R, Coffee Lake, Cannonlake, and maybe Whiskey Lake; I doubt all of those will be fixed. And I was expecting Intel to be selling 9th gen in 2H2018.

> Also, 8th gen includes Kaby Lake-R, Coffee Lake, Cannonlake, and maybe Whiskey Lake

hm what are they smoking exactly? I want some! :p

Gee, too bad. While their datacenter customers take security very seriously, their ordinary consumers probably run lots more unsigned code (JS, etc).

One of the most dangerous practical manifestations of this is in datacenters, though, where you use it to go poking around in other people's VMs.

On the consumer desktop/laptop, there's many other vectors a lot easier to use already, not least of which is plain old social engineering. Right now an in-the-wild virus that tried to use these vulnerabilities would strike me as somebody showboating more than a serious attempt to exploit systems with these methods.

When it's working for the datacenter, it'd be natural for the new designs to rattle down into consumer devices.

Naturally it goes the other way round: consumer (high end) chips receive new designs first and datacenters get them once they're somewhat battletested.

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