New Spectre variant 4: Our patches cause up to 8% performance hit, warns Intel
Summary
"If enabled, weve observed a performance impact of approximately two to eight percent based on overall scores for benchmarks like SYSmark® 2014 SE and SPEC integer rate on client and server test systems," wrote Intel executive vice president Leslie Culbertson.Intel calls the Spectre attack a Speculative Store Bypass and calls its mitigation Speculative Store Bypass Disable (SSBD), which is delivered as a microcode update to operating system vendors, equipment manufacturers, and other ecosystem partners.Intel in January was less forthcoming in its communications about the performance impact caused by its mitigations for Spectre variant 2, only saying it would vary depending on the workload.Microsoft releases new Windows updates to address the Spectre variant 2 flaw affecting Intel chips.AMD has released microcode updates for Spectre variant 2 that require Microsofts latest Windows 10 patch.
