As reported by TechPowerUp, Intel was fully aware that its new product was vulnerable to three vulnerabilities when it launched the 8th Gen Core "Coffee Lake" CPUs on September 25, 2017:
Intel's engineers would have had sufficient time to understand the severity of the vulnerability, as "Coffee Lake" is essentially the same micro-architecture as "Kaby Lake" and "Skylake." As one security researcher puts it, this could affect Intel's liability when 8th generation Core processor customers decide on a class-action lawsuit. As if that wasn't worse, "Skylake" and later micro-architectures could require micro-code updates in addition to OS kernel patches to work around the vulnerabilities. The three micro-architectures are expected to face a performance-hit, despite Intel extracting colorful statements from its main cloud-computing customers that performance isn't affected "in the real-world."So far, Intel is in damage control mode but it remains to be seen whether the firm's clients will turn a blind eye.