14 DAY TRIAL // Intel has issued another press release today to inform us all that it has released updates to most of its processors made in the past five years to make them immune to the Meltdown and Spectre security exploits disclosed recently.
The company says that it worked lately to develop an update to most of its CPUs for personal computers and servers released in the past five years. The updates will make those systems immune to the Meltdown and Spectre hardware bugs that could be exploited by unprivileged attackers to steal sensitive data stored in kernel memory. Intel says that these updates come as both software patches and firmware updates.
"Intel has already issued updates for the majority of processor products introduced within the past five years," says Intel in the press release. "By the end of next week, Intel expects to have issued updates for more than 90 percent of processor products introduced within the past five years. In addition, many operating system vendors, public cloud service providers, device manufacturers and others have indicated that they have already updated their products and services."
Intel still thinks the performance impact of the updates are workload-dependent
While many users were worried that the patches the Intel and other tech giants have developed to address the Meltdown and Spectre security exploits will have a huge impact on the overall performance of their machines, Intel still believes the performance impact of these updates is mostly workload-dependent for the average computer user. Again, they said that if there will be performance issues, these will most certainly be mitigated over time.
Intel says that these system updates will be made available by OEMs and operating system vendors, and users are urged to apply them as soon as possible. It is needless to say that Intel encourages users worldwide to keep their operating systems and apps up-to-date at all times, something that we're always telling our readers, and they also recommend them to use the automatic update functions of the OS they use. Intel will continue to develop futher updates to address these issues for other CPUs as well.