Rick Moen via luv-main wrote:
Quoting Rohan McLeod (rhn@jeack.com.au):
Well it seems Intel has been very naughty https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/intels_spin_the_registers_annotatio... Intel has a long history of trying to dissemble and misdirect their way out of paying for grave CPU flaws. Remember the 'Pentium Processor Invalid Instruction Erratum' of 1997, exposing all Intel Pentium and Pentium MMX CPUs to remote security attack, stopping them in their tracks if they can be induced to run processory instruction 'F0 0F C7 C8'?
No, of course you don't. That's why Intel gave it the mind-numbingly boring official name Pentium Processor Invalid Instruction Erratum', hoping to replace its popular names 'F00F bug' and 'Halt-and-Catch Fire bug'.
That's also why Intel's judo-move response was to create an information page stating that it had dealt with the CPU bug by linking to each of the various x86 OS vendors' bug-fix pages. 'Here, we fixed the grave defect in our CPU by sitting on our asses and letting software coders work around our error.'
The press, of course, cooperated by simply pointing people to Intel's page and implying that Intel 'developed a fix'. That's what they're going to do this time, too, I'm sure of that.
My page about the F00F bug. 'F00F Bug' on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Hardware/ (See in particular my dissection of Intel's spin-control tactics a year after the scandal broke.)
Thanks for the reply Rick; as these day it is unusual for anyone to reply to my emails ; though this has advantages as well as dis-advantages :-| ; regards Rohan McLeod