Re:Avoid speculative indirect calls in kernel
by maxlybbert on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @08:51PM
(#16067331)
I didn't take the comment as "all Intel CPUs are crap," but that (1) the fix is needed for crap CPUs and (2) the fix is turned on unconditionally on Intel CPUs, even future CPUs. That is, the code itself assumes that all CPUs that could be crap actually are crap. Torvalds wants a flag that could be set appropriately when Intel starts shipping CPUs that don't have this problem.
Re:Avoid speculative indirect calls in kernel
by nkw on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @08:48PM
(#16067318)
> had to be completed in a hurry
"We reported this issue to Intel, AMD and ARM on 2017-06-01"
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2018/01/reading-privi...
Re:Avoid speculative indirect calls in kernel
by mcny on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @08:33PM
(#16067240)
I agree with Linus though. Not that I've ever worked on a big project like the kernel but things like these will take a backburner.
The kernel maintainers don't have a way to bring these things up in Intel's boardroom like Apple can and it is possible that Intel will never produce a proper fix.
Re:Avoid speculative indirect calls in kernel
by cryptonector on Thursday January 04, 2018 @12:31AM
(#16068274)
That's Linus. But he's not wrong on this one. If anything he's restrained.
Depending on how their CPU development pipeline works, it's quite likely that even the next generation will still be affected, giving everyone plenty of time later for such niceties.
It's also slightly too harsh to call all of Intel's work "crap" when this bug has apparently existed for the better part of two decades without being noticed.