Intel is redesigning its processors to guard against Meltdown and Spectre

Intel appear today that it is redesigning its upcoming processors to protect against the recently disclosed Spectre flaw at the hardware level. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich says in a new post that the one Spectre variant will continue to be addressed by software updates, but Meltdown and the remaining Spectre variant will be mitigated by implementing partitioning in its next-generation Xeon processors and its eighth-generation Core processors due after this year.

From Intel:

While Variant ane will continue to exist addressed via software mitigations, we are making changes to our hardware design to farther address the other two. We have redesigned parts of the processor to innovate new levels of protection through division that will protect against both Variants 2 and 3. Think of this sectionalisation as additional "protective walls" between applications and user privilege levels to create an obstacle for bad actors.

In add-on to the hardware redesigns, Intel also appear that, as of today, it has shipped microcode updates for 100 percent of its products launched in the past five years that crave protection from Meltdown and Spectre. That process hasn't been pain-gratuitous: Intel's initial rollout included buggy updates that were establish to cause unwanted reboots on machines that applied them. That consequence appeared to have been remedied since, and Microsoft is at present assisting in distributing microcode updates via its update catalog.

Also Intel's own fixes, a number of other companies have been busy rolling out software updates since the disclosure of Meltdown and Spectre. Microsoft issued an emergency patch early on, followed by a set of firmware updates for Surface devies. AMD also announced optional patches, while NVIDIA rolled out a fix of software patches for its GPU drivers.

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