Some Intel 9th Gen Core CPUs deliver more in-silicon protection against Spectre and Meltdown

Posted on Wednesday, October 10 2018 @ 10:53 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck

AnandTech created an overview of the new hardware-based fixes for Meltdown and Spectre that are present in the processors that Intel revealed at its Fall Desktop PC event earlier this week.

In a nutshell, the new Coffee Lake Refresh chips like the Core i9-9900K, Core i7-9700K, and the Core i5-9600K now also feature hardware-based protection for Meltdown variant 3 and Meltdown variant 5. These fixes are not present in the new Xeon W-3175X, nor will they be included in the upcoming Core-X Skylake-X Refresh as those are still based on the same silicon but with different binning and cache configurations.

INTC fixes for Meltdown and Spectre per CPU

INTC fixes for Meltdown and Spectre per CPU

It will be interesting to see how these hardware-based fixes improve performance versus the software-based mitigation that is present for Coffee Lake.

About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.

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