AMD’s initial response to the Meltdown and Spectremade it clear that “there is almost zero risk to AMD processors.” But zero risk doesn’t mean zero impact, as we’re beginning to discover. “We have defined additional steps through a combination of processor microcode updates and OS code updates that we will make available to AMD customers and partners to further mitigate the threat,” says Mark Papermaster, AMD’s chief technology officer.
AMD is making firmware updates available to Ryzen and EPYC owners this week, and the company plans to update older processors “in the coming weeks.” As with Intel, these firmware updates will be provided to computer manufacturers, and it will be up to the vendors to ensure that customers receive them. AMD is not saying whether there will be any impact from implementing these updates, nor whether servers using EPYC processors will be significantly affected or not.
AMD has managed to stay out of the spotlight of Meltdown and Spectre simply because the company's processors are not vulnerable to Meltdown. It's increasingly clear, however, that the Spectre 2 variant is pushing vendors to release ready-made firmware updates. Intel aims to cover 90 percent of its processors from the past five years by January 15th, and now AMD is issuing its own updates. We're still waiting to hear from Apple whether the company needs to issue its own firmware updates for Mac and iOS devices, and the situation for Android could be even more complicated due to the wide variety of mobile device manufacturers and operating system versions.
AMD also reveals that its Radeon GPU architecture is not affected by Meltdown or Spectre, simply because these GPUs “do not utilize speculative execution and are thus not susceptible to these threats.” AMD says it plans to issue further statements as it continues to develop security updates for its processors.
