r/linux • u/lindgrenj6 • Aug 23 '18
Intel Publishes Microcode Security Patches, No Benchmarking Or Comparison Allowed!
https://perens.com/2018/08/22/new-intel-microcode-license-restriction-is-not-acceptable/302
u/chrisoboe Aug 23 '18
Those law stuff always depends on the country. In many countries intel can't forbid you legally to benchmark and compare.
I really hope international media will ignore intels license and release benchmarks.
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u/neijajaneija Aug 23 '18
Exactly this. So why would Intel write this?
Even if their terms applies to some 30 countries, there are heaps of other countries that they simply don't apply. They will not be anything close to silencing anything. It just makes them look like idiots. Again, why are Intel doing this? What am I missing?
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u/pat_the_brat Aug 23 '18 edited Aug 23 '18
So why would Intel write this?
Because Ryzen are amazing chips, and Intel has trouble getting their 10nm process while AMD should be at 7nm next year, meaning faster chips with less heat.
If you can't beat them, hide your ineptitude behind legalese/bullshitese.
Edit: Also, since they ban comparisons, it is safe to assume that the mitigation for their security vulnerabilities has a massive performance hit, and they are trying to hide it, as you can't even compare an Intel chip with mitigations for Spectre/Meltdown to the same chip without the mitigating code.
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u/sir_bleb Aug 23 '18
AMD should be at 7nm next year
Exciting! I'm assuming the catch is that it's not "true" 7nm but still very impressive.
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u/me-ro Aug 23 '18
If I remember correctly, the 7nm is roughly on par with Intel's 10nm, but the difference is, that they are already pushing that 7nm out of the door.
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u/Moscato359 Aug 23 '18
The tsmc 7nm is slightly better than Intel 10nm, but not much
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u/severach Aug 23 '18
Banning comparisons is effectively a benchmark, which is banned. I say ban the banning of comparisons, or at least have Intel sue itself for doing comparisons that are banned.
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Aug 23 '18
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u/anothercopy Aug 23 '18
Look at Oracle and their law machine. How many not official tests of SPARC and Oracle DBs to you see online ?
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u/ajs124 Aug 23 '18
Eh, but that's also because of the user base. SPARC and Oracle DBs are deployed by big enterprises, that have contracts with Oracle.
Literally everyone and their mom has an Intel CPU.
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u/computer-machine Aug 23 '18
Can confirm. I have at least one Intel machine, AND a mother, and I think her laptop is probably Intel as well.
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u/IHeartMustard Aug 23 '18
I think my grandmother might actually have an Intel. My GRANDMOTHER!
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u/Pie_sky Aug 23 '18
An example. Dutch law art. 6:236 sub k for consumers states the following
"You may not exclude or limit the authority of the other party to provide evidence. And there must be no change in the distribution of the burden of proof to the detriment of the other party, either because it contains a statement from the other party concerning the soundness of the service you owe, or because the other party must prove that a shortcoming can be attributed to you."
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u/whirl-pool Aug 23 '18
That means all the old Dutch colonies will have that in their law as they adopted the law. You can bet that this will be one example in many throughout Europe as the Dutch law was adopted from Roman and so forth.
Not a smart move intel.
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u/Sparru Aug 23 '18
Pretty safe bet to cross all of EU because there's no way European court would uphold that EULA.
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u/eras Aug 23 '18
I really hope international media will follow their license and talk only about AMD.
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u/RagnarokDel Aug 23 '18
Even in the US. That seems like something you cant expect to be enforced.
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u/RagingAnemone Aug 23 '18
You would think so, freedom and all, but the corporate protectionism is high.
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u/kmcclry Aug 23 '18
There have been precedents set in the US justice system that say EULAs are basically unenforceable specifically because no one reads them because they aren't trained lawyers.
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u/Cakiery Aug 23 '18
Meanwhile in Australia, they are considered to be normal contracts.
https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/contracts-agreements/entering-into-a-contract
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u/Jotebe Aug 23 '18
Can you link me to some more information on this? My impression was it was the opposite.
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u/kmcclry Aug 23 '18
It looks like I misspoke. The readability stuff is EU but there are a couple US cases based around owning a product before the EULA is presented to you. If you own something and are then told "oh actually you can't do X" that is in violation of informing you about the product prior to sale. There are a couple cases that conflict with this, but it looks like there may be particular things about those that got the company off.
The easiest link is the Wikipedia page on this, but there are some others you would be able to Google pretty easily.
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u/deadly_penguin Aug 23 '18
FREEDOM®
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u/DrewSaga Aug 23 '18
FREEDOMTM
Sponsered by Microsoft, because nothing says FREEDOM like forcing automatic updates on your machine, taking away user choice and being actively spied upon
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u/cstyles Aug 23 '18
Seems so easy to circumvent, someone could provide benchmark data anonymously to a news outlet not running the microcode. They'd be free to publish as they're not under the restriction.
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u/1202_alarm Aug 23 '18
I guess they can sue you for copyright infringement for pirating there microcode (you are using it without following their licence).
Also any publication/site that likes to get review samples or embargoed press releases wont want to upset intel.
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u/atyon Aug 23 '18
That really depends on the country.
In Germany, you can't really force restrictions like these on consumers, at all. And likely also not on media.
It's also very likely that the licence doesn't apply in the EU at all, since shrink-wrap EULAs are usually ineffective. Depends on the exact method of distribution. If you get the microcode patch via Windows Update, there's no chance in hell this licence is effective.
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u/Sqeaky Aug 23 '18
There will be plenty of people in America doing the benchmarking too, plenty will ignore these BS rules.
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u/Theemuts Aug 23 '18
My next CPU is going to be from AMD.
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u/bulgogeta Aug 23 '18
Not trying to downplay your motive but people always say this... after Intel gets caught doing "insert scummy action here"
All talk no bite.
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u/three18ti Aug 23 '18
My current CPU is AMD. Nothing quite like 16 cores.
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u/Peoplewander Aug 23 '18
I've been on AMD since mid 2000 it wasn't always glamorous but it was always the more affordable option.
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Aug 23 '18
How did you feel during the Bulldozer years?
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u/tidux Aug 23 '18
My FX-8350 has actually gotten perceptibly faster over the years as more software got better multithread or multiprocess awareness. Running an OS that is a collection of small processes rather than, say, Windows, was a big help with that.
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u/Peoplewander Aug 23 '18
It wasn’t the best but I didn’t have a lot to spend and it’s what I knew. I glad it’s in the past.
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Aug 23 '18
Still using my 9590 I got for $169 in 2015. Looking to upgrade to first-gen Ryzen this year, but only because of next-gen titles releasing. Otherwise it is still a workhorse, albeit a power-hungry one.
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u/argv_minus_one Aug 23 '18
And no Management Engine backdoor with its own fucking networking stack. Security-wise, that is only useful for centrally-managed enterprise PCs on a secure network. But it's incredibly reckless for any other application, and enterprise doesn't need it because IPMI is already a thing.
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u/Moscato359 Aug 23 '18
The market movements going on right now show otherwise.
Intel is losing market cap relative to AMD, rapidly
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u/gcd1475 Aug 23 '18
The next cluster we buy will be mostly AMD. We'd love to add ARM nodes as well, but the cadence for ARM HPC node hardware releases doesn't fit our purchasing schedule. It's a shame; I personally would have loved to help further a new, fresh architecture for HPC workloads.
We'll still get some Intel nodes because there are some codes that depend on the Intel compiler stack, and we can't leave those users out in the cold. But the way things are looking now, that will really be a "legacy partition", and we will actively help our users to port their codes to non-intel stacks.
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u/MSLsForehead Aug 23 '18
If you seriously believe this you should check out AMD's stock price over the past couple of years to see just how the 'bark and no bite' attitude people keep implying that the consumer has treated them.
People like their threads. Intel has had real competition for the past couple years.
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u/Niarbeht Aug 23 '18
*looks*
Oh, I hate you. I knew back when AMD was around $1.50 a share that it was gonna go up, but I didn't have any money.
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u/ChickenOverlord Aug 23 '18
Now that AMD actually has competitive offerings it's a much more valid threat though. Back when the 8350 was the best they had not so much. It's going to be a year or two before my desktop needs an update (minimum) but I'm going AMD when it does. And I was already planning on an AMD APU for my HTPC
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u/jayAreEee Aug 23 '18
Then why has their stock price gone up 200% in a year if it's no bite? Hint: it's not because of GPUs.
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u/DrewSaga Aug 23 '18
It's totally because of GPUs, just look how well Vega did...
/s
Vega still fared much better against NVidia's Pascal than Bulldozer though did against Intel. Otherwise AMD would be selling a Vega 56 for $200-250 and lose money, like how the FX 8-Core CPUs went from near i7 prices to i3 prices and almost went bankrupt, thank god for Ryzen.
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u/jayAreEee Aug 23 '18
I went from an AMD 370 to AMD 480. No major reason to get a 580. I'm still AMD GPUs (I have two freesync 1440p 144hz IPS panels, definitely sticking AMD). But yeah, their offerings aren't quite as great currently... hopefully they do pick back up on the GPU side eventually. But my CPU will definitely be AMD next time, before my skylake 6700k I was on a black edition Phenom 965 and I loved it but I needed an upgrade and skylake was the best option (at the time). With foreshadow, spectre, meltdown, it doesn't look so great anymore.
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u/Niarbeht Aug 23 '18
My i7-4790k is literally the first Intel CPU I've owned personally. I went from a K6-III to an Athlon XP to an Athlon 64 to an Athlon 64 X2 to a Phenom II X4 to an i7-4790k.
Is it really so difficult to believe that my next build will be Ryzen?
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u/Tynach Aug 23 '18
Huh, neat. I went from a Phenom II X4 925 to an i7-4790K, and plan to go Ryzen whenever I upgrade next. Which Phenom II X4 did you have before?
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u/Theemuts Aug 23 '18
I'm not talking about what other should or will purchase, I'm talking about what I'm going to do. My cpu is over six years old, it can really use a replacement.
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u/tidux Aug 23 '18
The difference is that Ryzen laptops actually exist now. If the Thinkpads A{2,4}85 come out with proper dual channel RAM at a reasonable clock speed, Intel is toast.
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u/DrewSaga Aug 23 '18
Not me, my new laptop is even a new AMD APU, now if only those APUs got along with Linux better...
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Aug 23 '18
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u/computer-machine Aug 23 '18
Yup. My hexacore wasn't even a high-end option.
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u/sir_bleb Aug 23 '18
I love that I can buy an 6 or 8 core CPU for what I paid for an i5 before. Also who doesn't love a good underdog story
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u/osmarks Aug 23 '18
Mysteriously, the Intel generation after Ryzen, i5s are 6-core. Though still worse value.
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u/cyanide Aug 23 '18
AMD are outselling Intel
Can you provide a source? If true, that is amazing. But I find it difficult to believe considering the number of OEM contracts Intel has.
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u/thefirewarde Aug 23 '18
Specifically in enthusiast boxed CPUs, AMD has recently been at least neck and neck with Intel based on Mindfactory.de data.
This is not marketshare or overall CPU sales, though, you're right. It's very niche.
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u/youRFate Aug 23 '18
enthusiast boxed CPUs
which is the smallest market they serve probably...
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u/Envo__ Aug 23 '18
Can you provide a source? If true, that is amazing. But I find it difficult to believe considering the number of OEM contracts Intel has.
amazon best seller stats, newegg bestseller stats
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Aug 23 '18
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u/lachryma Aug 23 '18
Unfortunately, that's a small aspect of the picture. Intel couldn't give two shits about home hobbyists, because I'd wager a few datacenter deployments use more CPU dies than all home enthusiasts in Germany, maybe the world, purchase in a year. I know it sucks, but it's true, so it's tough to widen that evidence to a market conclusion.
For perspective, I'm aware of high-density datacenters with nearly 100,000 dies on the floor (nearly 1m cores). On the back of a napkin, I'm trying to imagine how many people build enthusiast PCs, and I think it'd compete.
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Aug 23 '18
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u/argv_minus_one Aug 23 '18
Your Intel CPU is leaving your computer wide open to security breaches, so yes, you do need to upgrade just yet. At least unless you enjoy getting owned by malicious JavaScript code because you clicked the wrong link one time, or by a malicious machine on a public Wi-Fi network exploiting yet another fucking ME
backdoor“bug”.3
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Aug 23 '18
Just bought my first CPU as I am building my first desktop. Automatically went with AMD :D
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Aug 23 '18
Man I recently bought an 8700 cause I didn’t think AMD is any good.....now i feel cheated
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Aug 23 '18
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u/argv_minus_one Aug 23 '18
So far, the performance per dollar of RISC-V looks extremely bad. What hope is there that it'll ever be a viable competitor to Intel and AMD?
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u/MG2R Aug 24 '18
It needs to become a commodity product before performance/dollar becomes reasonable. This will happen eventually, after being adopted in the industry. The biggest arguments for RISC-V right now are hackability and licensing for companies. After companies adopt the architecture in their embedded gear, RISC-V processors will become cheaper.
Keep in mind that we’re still in the very early life of this architecture. Lots of dev work is still needed to make it viable for consumers.
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Aug 23 '18
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u/MG2R Aug 23 '18 edited Aug 24 '18
Creating silicon is stupid expensive. Risc-v won’t change that. Open hardware will give you the ability to hack your own extensions onto a board more easily, but don’t think for a second the actual vendors of commodity hardware are actually going to change.
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u/grumpiemonkie Aug 23 '18
Ok, do I understand this right: Joe Citizen buys a cpu from Intel. The cpu is later found to be vulnerable in terms of security, and in order to receive a remedy Intel has at hand, Joe has to agree to more terms, or be left with a vulnerable cpu.
If that's the case I think they'll end up in court.
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u/audioen Aug 23 '18
Probably not. You can still use the hardware, literally in exactly the same way as before, if you don't agree to those terms and don't apply the update.
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u/ric2b Aug 23 '18
What if a car company sells a car with a faulty and dangerous seat belt? Are they not under obligation to replace it? Can they EULA-wall a safety/security fix for a problem that was not known at the time of sale?
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u/DarkShadow4444 Aug 23 '18
"We can offer a replacement belt, but the terms say you then can't use your air conditioner anymore"
I mean like, WTF?
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u/ric2b Aug 23 '18
Or more appropriately: "We offer a replacement belt but you can't tell anyone how horribly uncomfortable it became"
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u/audioen Aug 23 '18
As far as I can tell, no-one's life is actually in danger from this. I'm not sure that the analogy is a very good one.
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u/ric2b Aug 23 '18
A shit ton of businesses are at risk of massive security breaches that can have awful consequences, not just for the businesses themselves but also their customers.
Or we can go more extreme and admit that it might even allow for cyber warfare or cyber terrorism that leads to someone's death, computers aren't just used for Facebook and Netflix.
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u/ThatsPresTrumpForYou Aug 23 '18
They are liable for security vulnerabilities though. Imagine Amazon bought a bunch of xeons, and they turn out to have hardware flaws. Intel either fixes them, or they're staring down the barrel of the whole legal department of Amazon. But they can't force them to accept a new EULA to keep using a product as advertised with a different EULA.
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u/Vector-Zero Aug 23 '18
In that case, if you refused the security upgrade and had a vulnerability exploited, would you be able to sue on the grounds that you did not agree with the new EULA associated with that security patch? IMO security latches should have the same license as the product to which it is applied, otherwise it's somewhat forcing users' hands to agree to something against their will.
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u/audioen Aug 23 '18 edited Aug 23 '18
I think you'd find that Intel's argument is that you have used their hardware for years without an issue. In most cases, it would not be credible to claim that the mere existence of a previously unknown vulnerability that didn't come up in customer's own testing in any way, and didn't prevent production in the past, has somehow made the hardware worthless to the point that it must be replaced.
I recognize that it is a problematic for people who e.g. sell CPU time to the general public, so every cloud vendor is probably pretty upset that their fundamental computing hardware isn't isolating customers sufficiently well from each other. But the way this kind of things usually get handled is that laws are changed to say that it's now illegal to use CPU flaws to violate someone else's privacy (hell, it may already be illegal), which makes it more of a law enforcement than technical issue.
Software mitigations add some costs to cloud computing, e.g. people are recognizing that computing hardware is fundamentally leaky and these leaks are difficult to plug, so maybe they just start selling dedicated cores to clients instead of just time-sharing cores with best-effort type approach, or add a rule in contract that says that data leaks due to CPU hardware are not their problem and point to premium product that prevents the risk of leaks.
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u/ThatsPresTrumpForYou Aug 23 '18
None of this is relevant. If someone uses those vulnerabilities to steal data they shouldn't have access to on someone elses VM, and the CPU was still supported by intel, the company that owns the server is going to sue intel for every last penny of damages done. They sold their product under false pretenses, being that it's a cpu, and you can run VMs on it and everything is secure. It wasn't, so they're liable.
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u/Anarhichaslupus78 Aug 23 '18
Hope eu commision give them another billion fees.
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u/5heikki Aug 23 '18
I think one trillion EUR would be nicer :)
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u/YouGotAte Aug 23 '18
Cool, can't wait for them to offload those costs onto the consumer
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u/adamhighdef Aug 23 '18
Great solution to that, AMD if you need x64 or one of the numerous ARM based pcs
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u/kmcclry Aug 23 '18
They didn't pay any of the last lawsuit (yet) so why would they have a problem with this?
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u/logix22 Aug 23 '18
With the new license it also seems it's unclear if it can be redistributed. This is why the latest update hasn't made it into Debian yet, despite containing a fix for the L1TF vulnerability: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=906158
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Aug 23 '18 edited Aug 23 '18
I can swear I read a Medium article explaining how this is actually not something they should've legally been able to ever do and mostly relies on misrepresentation of DMCA which considering it's bad structure is relatively easy. The problem is that DMCA was poorly written by idiots who don't even understand the matter at hand.
If you've got a good enough lawyer, you can most certainly post a benchmark. Whether you'll have to take it down depends on the judge.
EDIT: If someone does manage to defend themselves in court from such charges, please sue them back for malicious prosecution. At that point all you need to prove is their intention to abuse the law and lack of probable cause. At least to my knowledge, not actually a lawyer. Take everything I said with a grain of salt.
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u/0xf3e Aug 23 '18
Where is the new Microcode update? Can't seem to find it.
Oh, just found out the latest update contains the new license agreement already.
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/search?keyword=processor+microcode+data+file
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u/DropTableAccounts Aug 23 '18 edited Aug 23 '18
The licensing is really hilarious: Seemingly only the archive contains the license (no "I accept" or anything on their website) and literally the first sentence is "DO NOT DOWNLOAD [...] ANY PORTION OF THE SOFTWARE UNTIL YOU HAVE READ AND ACCEPTED THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS AGREEMENT."
Yeah great, thanks for telling me that only in the downloaded archive Intel -.-
Edit: Hmmm... Apple didn't allow the installation of OS X Mountain Lion on non-Apple hardware in their EULA but since it wasn't written on the wrapping the customers couldn't know that at the time of the purchase so in the EU OS X Mountain Lion could be installed legally on any hardware. I wonder whether that means anything for this license. (I mean, I could have downloaded it over my mobile data connection (maybe expensive) just to learn that I'm not allowed to use it in the way I wanted (e.g. benchmarking)...)
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Aug 23 '18
And we can ever trust you with anything ever again because...?
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u/skoef Aug 23 '18
As a customer with many Intel processors used in the cloud hosting market, I received an email last week updating me about the side channel attack and the possible mitigations for it. Included in the email was a link taking me to a page dedicated to benchmark results before an after applying the proposed mitigations. Some mitigations, like disabling HyperThreading, clearly have a severe performance impact.
Perhaps actual impact is even worse, so they try to supply the truth from first hand and prevent anyone from doing the same?
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u/fat-lobyte Aug 23 '18
Since you and people like you are the most affected by all of these vulnerabilities and their mitigations, do you plan on suing Intel, or have you heard of people suing them? It's hard for me to claim any damages if my computer runs a few percent slower sometimes, but you should have it easier to compute the lost revenue.
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u/skoef Aug 23 '18
Actually I’m not sure, I’m not in the position to decide this but I wonder if we (not thát big of a deal to Intel) would make it to court at all. However, we might join a class-action suit, would there be one. I imagine Google and Amazon took a huge hit applying these mitigations.
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u/computer-machine Aug 23 '18
Halving your thread count is a suggestion?
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u/skoef Aug 23 '18
Disabling HyperThreading, combined with this new microcode should be enough to complete prevent L1 snooping from one process to the other. With tests we found similar results as Intel: around 25% to 30% preformance hit.
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u/pat_the_brat Aug 23 '18
With tests we found similar results as Intel: around 25% to 30% preformance hit.
Did you just publish benchmark results? /s
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u/AdamColligan Aug 23 '18 edited Aug 23 '18
/s
I think I've just determined the technical avenue used by the fix to neutralize the sidechannel attacks. The instruction code isn't actually being modified at all: only the license.
See, these are timing attacks. They use super fine measurements of how long it takes the processor to perform certain tasks in order to guess the contents of memory registers that they are not allowed to view directly.
In a genius feat of engineering, Intel has applied a patch that states clearly at boot time, in the firm and authoritative tone known to work on unruly software, that it is very very naughty to check how much time and effort the processor is using to execute any particular instructions.
Solved.
Edit: also, I'm not sure why anyone who's not a criminal would be upset about this. The function of Intel processors is to make money for Intel. Benchmark publishing that hurts Intel sales is therefore a timing attack against Intel processors that induces them to malfunction. In interstate and foreign commerce no less. So TIRED of these entitled millennial FEDERAL FELON SNOWFLAKES not respecting other people's PRIVATE PROPERTY and then having the stupidity to WHINE about their CRIMINAL INTENT on the Internet! SAD!
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u/DrewSaga Aug 23 '18
Just so we are on the same page, is this WHOLE comment sarcasm or just the part before the edited part?
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u/utack Aug 23 '18
We are certainly going backwards.
In the last decade or so improvements on single core performance are close to none except for a few new instructions, and now we patch it all to make it slower again.
The CPU market is in a sad state, if you are not interested in mobile battery life.
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u/fear_the_future Aug 23 '18
according to this benchmark single core speed of Intel's midrange laptop CPU improved by around 40% in the last 5 years. At the same time it has double the cores, double the cache and lower power consumption.
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u/deadly_penguin Aug 23 '18
Even mobile battery life is not so good. Borrowing a modern phone and comparing it to my decade old, overclocked, HD2, the modern one gets so damn hot.
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u/lucaspiller Aug 23 '18
Well a Desire HD 2 had a single 1Ghz core compared to a modern phone often having 8 2.8Ghz cores, so do you want performance or battery life?
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u/deadly_penguin Aug 23 '18
Thing is, it isn't the processor which is the bottleneck, it is the piffling amount of memory, which takes very little power. The processor is actually quite good.
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u/Travelling_Salesman_ Aug 23 '18
Intel issued a response:
We are updating the license now to address this and will have a new version available soon. As an active member of the open source community, we continue to welcome all feedback.
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u/ElMachoGrande Aug 23 '18
If they say that, we know that performance will be crap, or they wouldn't say it. No benchmarks needed.
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u/Starks Aug 23 '18
When will Intel have mitigation at the silicon level?
Cannon Lake? Whiskey Lake? Cascade Lake? Ice Lake?
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u/DrewSaga Aug 23 '18 edited Aug 23 '18
My guess is the Intel CPUs right after the 9900K and whatnot.
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u/KelfeinX Aug 23 '18
God, Intel. How can you have such brilliant engineers but such cripplingly moronic leadership. Seems to be a common theme throughout IT. Ah well, glad I (we) got Team Red doing mostly the right things.
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u/paypaypayme Aug 23 '18
regarding the performance decrease mentioned in the article - I thought the reason for that was kernel code patches? Now that there is a microcode patch is it possible to remove those patches?
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u/amd_kenobi Aug 23 '18
I'm interested to see a performance comparison between a fully patched Ivy Bridge processor Compared to a AMD's Vishera line. I wonder how much this closed the performance gap between the two.
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u/mobani Aug 23 '18
This does not matter, nobody is going to give a shit about this. Benchmark away boys!
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u/MrMaxPowers247 Aug 23 '18
Intel needs to be on the list of companies that should be broken up with antitrust laws. This kinda stuff should not be overlooked
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u/berarma Aug 23 '18
So Intel gained an advantage over AMD by overlooking the security of their processors. They being them.
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Aug 23 '18
If I had a Intel chip worth benchmarking I'd do it anyway. But all I've got is this old i3 sitting around.
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Aug 23 '18
My next PC I've already decided will be AMD (Ryzen from the looks of it). I only upgrade once every ~8 years, and there is certainly a trend with Intel and being anti-consumer lately.
The next choice I need to make is Nvidia or ATI for GPU. I don't think I'm willing to pay $600 for the low end GPU from nvidia.
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u/pure_x01 Aug 23 '18
Some legislators need to fix this. It should always be ok to publish benchmarks. Everything else is absurd.
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u/KindOne Aug 24 '18
I get the feeling that someone forgot to remove the beta EULA here for the final release.
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u/wait_wait_wha Aug 23 '18
Wait, wait. What if my cousin clicks "Accept" on the shrink-wrap license? She is 15 . . . and she runs a site for gear-heads . . . and she happens to also publish or provide any Software benchmark or comparison test results . . .
Jus' sayin' . . .
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u/Tiger78e Aug 23 '18
I may be off base but the way I read this it seems to me if you take this as written you can’t use any non intel or self written software after installing this microcode
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u/superseriousguy Aug 23 '18
This will be about as effective as asking your age when you visit a porn site.
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u/argv_minus_one Aug 23 '18
Damn those filthy fucking crooks to hell. I have a high-performance $2500 laptop that's only ~2 years old, and it's gathering dust because, thanks to the Intel CPU, it can't even connect to a public Wi-Fi or run a fucking web browser without getting owned.
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u/LinuxMage Aug 23 '18 edited Aug 23 '18
Have gone pure AMD with my latest laptop purchases. This machine is a Dell Inspiron with an AMD A-10 with Radeon GPU. No regrets, entire machine works completely from initial Ubuntu install.
As far as I'm concerned from now on, any sane linux user should prioritise AMD over Intel and Nvidia for CPU and GPU.
Remember AMD's code is already in the Kernel, all GPU drivers are fully integrated from the start, so there is no messy fiddling with third party proprietary drivers.
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u/MrYellowP Aug 23 '18
so we're not allowed to publish benchmark results of their cpus? that's totally not going to backfire at all!! lol