At the time of its release, the giant chip maker Intel already knew that its new Cofee Lake processor was vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown security flaws. This we have known recently because the tech giant Google’s Project Zero team was involved in the discovery of the vulnerabilities of processors to the company in mid-2017.
Intel Released “Coffee Lake” Knowing It Was Vulnerable
At the time of its release, the giant chip maker Intel already knew that its new Cofee Lake processor was vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown security flaws. This we have known recently because the tech giant Google’s Project Zero team was involved in the discovery of the vulnerabilities of processors to the company in mid-2017. And, even so, Intel decided to stay ahead.
Honestly, little trust inspires me a company that puts its billfold over its customers, much later they fill their mouths talking about them being their top priority. But this seems to be the case of the all-powerful Intel, which, immersed in a race against the clock against the reborn AMD, decided to leave the safety of its customers completely separate and to draw a new processor model, even knowing that Coffe Lake was vulnerable to Specter and Meltdown.
Intel’s engineers must have been more than capable of understanding the severity of the vulnerabilities that had been discovered, since Coffee Lake is, in essence, a derivative of the Core architecture that Intel has been using for almost ten years (since the times of the Sandy Bridge to be more exact). Although for the Skulake and Kaby Lake processors, apart from the patch, a new microcode would have to be released to make the patch really effective.
If Intel knew that Coffee Lake was vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown, why did not they do anything about it?
Well, actually they did. They created the patch that they have been distributing at full speed to try to alleviate the failure and that is very good. The problem here is that they were so blinded in their race against AMD that they did not realize the other problem that was coming their way.
And I deluded myself, who thought that Intel’s patch had come to light so quickly because the company had put all the meat on the spit to try to avoid greater evils. But no, the patch was available so fast because it was ready for some time, only that Intel “forgot” (conveniently) that it had it.
The luck is that, in the end, the application of the patch has not brought with it the performance penalties that we were all fearing (especially the server companies). But it is also clear that this kind of attitude on the part of Intel is going to bring it a lot of trouble in the future. No wonder, therefore, that the CEO of Intel has suddenly decided to get rid of most of the company’s shares. I would have done it in my perspective too.
So, what do you think about this? Simply share all your views and thoughts in the comment section below.
