Posted on 06/05/2019 10:14:48 AM PDT by killermosquito
Meltdown, Spectre, Foreshadow, and ZombieLoad are critical vulnerabilities in modern processors.
I need a new computer. How long do I have to wait until a new processor will be available that is designed without those problems? Or am I going to have to go ahead and buy and live with the patches that reportedly cripple performance?
I don't buy computers very often. My last home purchase was 2009 so whatever I buy will be a laptop that is powerful and loaded (lots of RAM and big HD) and will hopefully last, minimally for 7 or 8 years. I also am waiting for WIFI 6 and will replace our home router at the same time.
What are you computer/laptop purchase plans?
There will always be vulnerabilities.
I own a computer/phone repair shop, I work on PCs, I use a Mac and never have ANY of the issues pcs do. I buy 2-3 year old refurbished Macs for a fraction of the new price and they look good and run great.
I suggest you just go ahead and get a new computer and struggle along with it, otherwise you will have to struggle along without a computer for a very, very long time, until after resurrection.
These vulnerabilities are not going away anytime soon and new ones appear and there are always bad people taking advantage. Fortunately there are also good smart people who patch things to keep them out.
But you would have a very long wait, waiting for perfection.
Bear in mind that we may be entering a time when the capabilities of bad guys is nearly as advanced as the brilliant engineers who design the processors in the first place. The Intel vulnerabilities have all to one extent or another been patched and fixed. Performance has suffered a little bit, but far less than the doom and gloom of the early predictions. It’s only a few percentage points max right now.
Long term, we can expect Intel to abandon their current version of Hyper Threading and create a new execution pipeline from the ground up but it will take serious time (as in years). They weren’t expecting this to be as big of a deal as it was.
I don’t think you need to NOT buy an Intel CPU because of these issues. However, if you want to buy a CPU that isn’t susceptible to most of the CURRENTLY KNOWN exploits, buy an AMD Ryzen. They are simply incredibly good at the moment. AMD is poised to take the desktop CPU market lead from Intel during the second half of this year before Intel will be able to respond with faster new technology. This is pretty remarkable for a company that was all but dead for nearly 10 years.
Yup.
That's why we have influenza, chicken pox, etc.
My advise would be to buy a notebook with an SSD(Solid state drive).You will find your notebook will run much cooler as there will be NO moving parts in the drive.
If you want a hard disk drive buy a USB backup drive.That way you have plenty of storage.
These days you can buy a 1TB SSD for 300.00.Thats a lot of storage right there.
I agree.
Although PDJT wasn’t talking about computer processors per se, he recently said that things are too complicated (paraphrased).
In fact, some recently discovered processor vulnerabilities weren't discovered until roughly a decade after processors were introduced to market.
I just put a 500GB SSD in my 2010 MacBook Pro and it is lightning fast now.
You must be new to computers.
If you do not connect it to the Internet, I will be snug as a bug in a rug.
From the beginnings of ic manufacture there have been little surprises that have popped up, known as undocumented op codes.
The process has only gotten more complicated and regardless of how well they design and plan the manufacture, there’s always that precursor of “well, now we just to see what the silicon does.”
I’m looking hard at AMD Ryzens that should be appearing in ready built computers in the 2nd half of this year. No Intel CPU for me, due to their vulnerabilities.
My OS is Linux Mint. Windows has too many bugs.
Very unlikely to ever occur.
Think of it this way: the most vulnerable part of a safe’s security is the door.
Without a door, the contents could be protected quite securely and easily. It also makes building a safe much easier and cheaper.
The problem of course is the only reason people make safes is to sell them to people who buy safes, and those customers are quite insistent on that door being there so they can get things in and out.
A computer chip’s doors are its interfaces, both internal to the chip and connecting the chip to other chips. There are millions of them, and they need to open those doors for the good ones and zeros to get through.
You can make changes to those “doors” in an attempt to only let ‘good’ ones and zeros through, but it’s a balance of accessibility and usefulness against vulnerabilities and threats. Malicious actors can also use trickery and small holes to create big problems once they make it inside barrier areas. The more secure you make something, the more vulnerable you are to the something not doing what you need it to do.
It doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying, or that people don’t work very hard in reducing these vulnerabilities, but it does mean that it is very difficult to get correct 100% and keep it there.
I don’t buy bleeding edge stuff like you do, preferring to work down the price/performance curve with what was state of the art maybe 3-4 years ago. Aside from $ these machines are not prime targets anymore.
But if you wait for the perfect hardware or software you will be waiting forever because it never has and never will exist.
Never.....................
Computer ‘vulnerabilities’ are not an ‘accident’................
Until one critical ‘bit’ malfunctions, then it’s gone......................
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