Problems With Intel Chips affecting most devices
Meltdown and Spectre: ‘worst ever’ CPU bugs affect virtually all computers
AMD processors are not subject to the types of attacks that the kernel page table isolation feature protects against. The AMD microarchitecture does not allow memory references, including speculative references, that access higher privileged data when running in a lesser privileged mode when that access would result in a page fault.
”The only way to get around this hardware level feature is to use what is called a Kernel Page Table Isolation (KPTI) technique which will make the kernel completely blind to the system and remove it from the virtual memory space until a system call occurs. Basically, where it was an invisible stage hand hidden just behind the curtain, now it won’t be on the stage at all until it’s called. Needless to say, this could introduce severe time penalties in context-switching heavy situations where a lot of system calls are required. The Linux team also mulled over FUCKWIT (Forcefully Unmap Complete Kernel with Interrupt Trampolines) which should give you an idea of how frustrating the bug is for developers.
According to some sources, this number can range anywhere from 5% to 30% depending on which type of processor you have since modern CPUs have a feature called PCID which can reduce the performance hit. According to an existing KPTI workaround posted at Postgresql, you should expect a 17% best case slowdown and a worst case 23% slowdown. In any case, all sources agree that a slowdown will almost definitely occur and this is not something Intel can simply patch with a microcode update. AMD processors at this time are unaffected since they do not utilize speculative execution.”
https://wccftech.com/intel-kernel-memory-leak-bug-speculative-execution-performance-hit/
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