Without a doubt it seems that Intel is suffering serious problems in its production. To the negative image offered to the outside world by the fact that they literally lag behind in terms of the development of much smaller manufacturing processes, a world where it seems that Samsung is the winner, now we find that the American company seems to be victim of a serious vulnerability problem that affects all its processors manufactured in the last decade.
Before continuing, highlight that, as has been published in a medium such as The Registerapparently on intel they would have already found a solution to this great vulnerability of its processors, which would cause a great loss of performance in them and that would be solved with a software patch that is already developed and that will arrive on Windows, macOS and Linux in the coming days.
Intel processors can lose 5% to 30% in performance
Apparently the problem is caused by the execution of software that, as expected, has not been disclosed by the company. What this program did was that the performance of Intel processors suffered with drops ranging from 5% to 30%, a figure that may vary depending on the specific processor model and the operating system running on it.
As an emergency solution, it is worth noting that Intel engineers have worked around the clock to find a solution as soon as possible, noting that for example Microsoft integrated this patch in some of the beta versions released recently of Windows although the final version that will reach the whole world will not be released until after a few days. For its part, the patches for the operating system of Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), They are ready, although in this case not only will an update of the processor firmware be enough, but the operating system itself must be updated, so the real solution will still take time to arrive. In the case of Linux, tell you that the solution is already available to everyone.
The problem lies in the management that Intel processors do of memory
Going into a little more detail, apparently the error that has been detected in Intel processors is closely related to the management that does the same of the memory spaces used by the operating system kernel. Apparently and according to the study carried out, there is a vulnerability in this management by means of which all the security measures that protect processes and memory addresses can be bypassed.
As you may be thinking, this can get to produce a great risk in the stability of the entire system leaving the door open to have access to information of great value such as the passwords of the different services that may be installed on your computer. The solution that they give in Intel, happens to separate the memory used by the kernel of the operating system from that used by the rest of the processes. For this, it has been deemed appropriate to use a technique known by the name of Kernel Page Table Isolation.
The use of Kernel Page Table Isolation can negatively impact the overall performance of any team
Why wasn't Intel using this technique? Despite the fact that the Kernel Page Table Isolation has been known for years and at the time Intel surely did a lot of tests, finally it was decided not to implement it in its processors because it has its Negative point since every time the processor needs to switch between the «kernel mode" and the "user mode»He needs to work for a longer time while consuming a greater amount of resources which negatively impacts the overall performance of the team itself.
At the moment all this information has not been officially confirmed although it is expected that both Intel itself and the other companies involved will release an official statement very soon explaining all the aspects related to this vulnerability. So far, however, this information has remained under a strict embargo ruled by the microprocessor manufacturer.