AMD will issue optional Ryzen and Epyc microcode updates for Spectre
Now that CES is winding down, attention is returning to the response to the major vulnerabilities caused by oversights in the way speculative execution is handled in most modern processors. Yesterday, AMD's Senior VP and CTO Mark Papermaster wrote the company's first response to the developing problem since January 3. Google's Project Zero (GPZ) divided Meltdown and Spectre into three different classes of attack, and Papermaster laid out AMD's planned response to each. Most notably, the company will issue microcode updates for Ryzen and Epyc CPUs as a preventive measure against one of the Spectre variants.
AMD's chips are vulnerable to GPZ Variant 1 (Spectre, Bounds Check Bypass). The company believes this issue can be solved with operating system patches. The chip design firm says that Microsoft is distributing patches to the majority ...