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Intel distributes microcode updates as a 2,048 (2 kilobyte) binary blob. [1] The update contains information about which processors it is designed for, so that this can be checked against the result of the CPUID instruction. [1] The structure is a 48-byte header, followed by 2,000 bytes intended to be read directly by the processor to be ...
Intel promised microcode updates to resolve the vulnerability. [1] The microcode patches have been shown to significantly reduce the performance of some heavily-vectorized loads. [7] Patches to mitigate the effects of the vulnerability have also been created as part of the forthcoming version 6.5 release of the Linux kernel. [8]
In October 2018, Intel disclosed a TSX/TSX-NI memory ordering issue found in some Skylake processors. [26] As a result of a microcode update, HLE support was disabled in the affected CPUs, and RTM was mitigated by sacrificing one performance counter when used outside of Intel SGX mode or System Management Mode . System software would have to ...
Intel reported that they are preparing new patches to mitigate these flaws. [24] On August 14, 2018, Intel disclosed three additional chip flaws referred to as L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF). They reported that previously released microcode updates, along with new, pre-release microcode updates can be used to mitigate these flaws. [25] [26]
Read 64-bit Time Stamp Counter (TSC) into EDX:EAX. [m] [a] In early processors, the TSC was a cycle counter, incrementing by 1 for each clock cycle (which could cause its rate to vary on processors that could change clock speed at runtime) – in later processors, it increments at a fixed rate that doesn't necessarily match the CPU clock speed. [n]
A second prominent example is the set of microcode patches that Intel offered for some of their processor architectures of up to 10 years in age, in a bid to counter the security vulnerabilities discovered in their designs – Spectre and Meltdown – which went public at the start of 2018.
A microcode update fixing a bug with the eTVB algorithm was published the previous month, but this was confirmed by Intel to not be the root cause of the problem, although it may have been a contributing factor. [43] Intel confirmed that there is no fix to the issue if it already affects a CPU, and any damage to the CPU is permanent.
In response to the research, Intel released microcode updates to mitigate the issue. The updated microcode ensures that off-core accesses are delayed until sensitive operations – specifically the RDRAND , RDSEED , and EGETKEY instructions – are completed and the staging buffer has been overwritten. [ 21 ]