Intel advises users to stop installing Spectre microcode patches
The Meltdown and Spectre security flaws are certainly scary, but there are reasons to be leery of the various updates intended to mitigate them. Even if you aren't affected by the performance hit these updates can produce (leading some folks to refer to the patches as "SpecDown"), you could be at risk of suffering random reboots. Fortunately, Intel's now identified the cause of those restarts, at least for Haswell and Broadwell machines.
Unfortunately, identifying the root cause means a new round of patches is in the works for Haswell and Broadwell systems. The company says it has a new patch nearly ready for systems with those CPUs that offers mitigation against the Spectre vulnerability and comes without risk of random restarts. Newer Intel platforms could still experience ...