Google's CPU patch will not have much impact on the device thanks to new technology

This article is in the series: Overview of vulnerabilities on Intel, AMD, ARM chips: Meltdown and Specter. Please read all the articles in the series to get information as well as take steps to protect your device against these two serious security holes.

In a post on our Online Security Blog site, two Google engineers describe patching to the chip level, deployed across Google's entire architecture, and only significantly affects the device.

The new technique, called ReptOnline, is published in detail by Google, hoping other companies can follow suit. If this is practically the same as what Google said, Intel and many other chip makers will avoid the anticipated slowdown disaster.

'There have been many speculations that KPTI will have a significant effect on machine speed,' Google said, referring to the Kernel Page Table Isolation . 'The effect of KPTI depends on the number of system calls of the application. Most workloads, including our cloud architecture, only have an acceptable level of influence. '

The new technique will reduce the effect of patch to machine speed, to some extent

This news is also important for Google Cloud because some cloud services will be affected by this chip problem. According to Google, ReptOnline has been expanded and does not affect speed much.

'Of course, Google recommends that you test before you expand,' Google said, 'We don't guarantee the speed or the specific impact when operating.'

Google 's evaluation is similar to Intel' s report, which says whether the slow down depends on the high workload 'for normal computer users will not affect much'. However, many still believe that Intel said so to lower the importance of the newly discovered vulnerability. Some reviews have shown that the device is 17% slower.

Recently, Intel said its patch will help the chip be immune to new attacks and that it doesn't affect speed much.

Notably, this new technique is only applicable to 1 of 3 variations of attack methods (namely 'branch target injection'). It is the new variations that are difficult to handle. The remaining two variants ('bounds check bypass' and 'rogue data cache load') will only fix the level, in turn, software and OS, so the impact on the speed of the machine will other.

Interested readers can read Google's blog post here https://security.googleblog.com/2018/01/more-details-about-mitigations-for-cpu_4.html

See more:

1. Serious security vulnerability on Intel chips
2. How to protect the computer against Meltdown vulnerability on CPU?
3. Apple confirmed that all Mac and iOS devices are affected by Meltdown and Specter