Intel studies the performance impact of Meltdown fixes
by from Techreport on (#3D249)
Intel and Microsoft have insisted that the performance impact of the Kernel Page Table Isolation fix for the recently-revealed Meltdown vulnerability will be much smaller than people feared. Now, Intel's released some hard numbers, and perhaps to the consternation of the "everything is 30% slower" doomsayers, the actual impact for client users on modern machines appears to be minimal.
Intel's testing was done using Skylake, Kaby Lake, and Coffee Lake CPUs on Windows 10, as well as Skylake machines running Windows 7. All of the test rigs were equipped with SSDs, although Intel also tested the Skylake-and-Windows-7 combo on ...