As reported last week, Intel 's Meltdown and Spectre patch is causing boot issues for older processors. Now, Intel says that current firmware updates may also cause PCs with newer processors to boot more frequently. In a blog post, Intel's Navin Shenoy said that PCs updated with Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge, Skylake, and even Intel's latest Kaby Lake processors are also affected.
Patches can also affect performance, with Intel saying that tests in data centers simulating stock market interaction and electronic trading showed a 4% slowdown. Other tests involving different server workloads showed slowdowns of up to 25%. Shenoy wrote that Intel has issued firmware updates for 90% of the CPUs it has introduced in the past five years, but noted that the company had “still a lot of work to do.”.
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich previously wrote an open letter and promised to be more transparent about the impact of CPU and performance. The Meltdown and Spectre security flaws affect nearly all computing devices built in the last two decades.
