Intel drops plans to develop Spectre microcode for ancient chips

Enlarge / A Sandy Bridge wafer. Sandy Bridge is the oldest chip family that's guaranteed to get Spectre variant 2 fixes. (credit: Intel)

Intel has scaled back its plans to produce microcode updates for some of its older processors to address the "Spectre variant 2" attack. Core 2 processors are no longer scheduled to receive updates, and, while some first generation Core products have microcode updates available already, others have had their update cancelled.

Earlier this year, attacks that exploit the processor's speculative execution were published with the names Meltdown and Spectre, prompting a reaction from hardware and software companies.

The Spectre attack has two variants, numbered version 1 and version 2. Spectre version 1 attacks will need software fixes, and the nature of these attacks means that they may always need software fixes. Version 2 is amenable to hardware and firmware fixes.

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