Hardware makers react

Intel, AMD, Google and more attempt to repair the damage.

Despite Meltdown also affecting limited ARM chips, and Spectre affecting AMD and ARM as well, it was Intel that received the brunt of the bad publicity.

Intel initially claimed that any patches for the flaws wouldn’t introduce significant slowdowns on hardware, and by the middle of January it had released firmware updates for 90 per cent of processors made in the past five years. It also vowed to work with software developers and other hardware manufacturers to eliminate the flaws. However, this did not stop three class-action lawsuits being filed in California, Indiana and Oregon against the company ( http://bit.ly/intel

lawsuits), with more expected. Meanwhile, in a blog post ( http://bit.ly/

microsoft-reaction) Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President, Windows and Devices Group at Microsoft explained that patches for Windows machines for Meltdown and Spectre would have variable effects on the performance of those PCs. Some patches from Intel were also found to cause system instability in some cases.

It wasn’t plain sailing on AMD’s side, either, with the company slow to admit that its chips were susceptible to Spectre, with a class action lawsuit accusing the chip maker of keeping quiet about the problems. It also emerged that a Windows update meant to mitigate the issue was causing PCs running AMD chips to fail to boot ( http://bit.ly/

amd-boot-failure). If you’re concerned about the hardware you’re running, check out the complete list of CPUs affected at www.techarp.com/ guides/complete-meltdown-spectre-cpu-list.