I’ve been trying to read up on this subject, but man the information out there can get overwhelming fast. I’m more of a software guy, hardware is not my expertise.
So please explain in easy to understand terms:
What should I do about these flaws I mentioned? I’m on an Intel ASUS laptop.
Also, I want to buy another laptop at the end of the year. Should any of this affect my buying decisions? Is every computer affected?
In: Technology
I believe in basic terms they make use of speculative execution. Which essentially means that in reality when your program contains an if statement, the processor will guess the possible result of the if statement (matches the if or not, the “or not” could be else, elif nothing, etc)
The processor will then start to execute that path in parallel with the if. If it was right, it saved time, if not, it didn’t cost any more than if it waited.
The processor has gotten pretty good at guessing so this process is used a lot. Though more in intel CPUs with this bug.
In terms of what to do, stay updated. The updates may affect performance a little, depends on the chip and particular style of program. E.g. hard disk access is more affected.
If you were planning to get a new machine make sure you look at benchmarks that include the new patches. Consider an AMD machine instead maybe.
A major issue with these bugs is that speculative execution is baked into the chip and so cannot be easily changed with firmware updates
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