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Any impact on iMacpro by the latest Intel's chips issue?
- Thread starter gerrard0804
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I haven't seen anything in detail from Apple yet, but other sources are saying that most of the fixes needed are already in 10.3.2 and have had hardly any impact on performance, partly due to changes they had already made over the last decade for other reasons. There are supposed to be some more changes coming in 10.3.3 but nobody's saying exactly what they will be so we don't know the impact yet (if any).
If you can afford to wait on your ordering decision without causing yourself any problems then there's no harm doing that, but given how widespread the effects of this are going to be (MacOS, Linux, Windows etc), I'm not sure there will be any benefit unless it turned out that the iMac Pro was affected much worse than other systems and you could then choose to buy something else. That seems very unlikely to me though, I'd have thought that whatever you buy is likely to be at least as badly affected as the iMP, even if you moved to Linux or (if you were really desperate) Windows.
My guess is that the only option to avoid it completely would be to wait till Intel produces chips that don't have the problem and O/Ses are then updated to recognise those chips and not apply a fix that isn't needed with them. I suspect that won't happen by tomorrow, maybe not even by the day after (or in fact any time that could be called "real soon now"), so it depends how long you're thinking of delaying your order...
Also, come to think of it, when fixed chips do appear, I wonder whether they will have reduced performance because of the fix. If so there might suddenly be a rush to buy machines with the pre-fix chips, making the current iMPs more valuable! Probably just wishful thinking there, but stranger things have happened.
If you can afford to wait on your ordering decision without causing yourself any problems then there's no harm doing that, but given how widespread the effects of this are going to be (MacOS, Linux, Windows etc), I'm not sure there will be any benefit unless it turned out that the iMac Pro was affected much worse than other systems and you could then choose to buy something else. That seems very unlikely to me though, I'd have thought that whatever you buy is likely to be at least as badly affected as the iMP, even if you moved to Linux or (if you were really desperate) Windows.
My guess is that the only option to avoid it completely would be to wait till Intel produces chips that don't have the problem and O/Ses are then updated to recognise those chips and not apply a fix that isn't needed with them. I suspect that won't happen by tomorrow, maybe not even by the day after (or in fact any time that could be called "real soon now"), so it depends how long you're thinking of delaying your order...
Also, come to think of it, when fixed chips do appear, I wonder whether they will have reduced performance because of the fix. If so there might suddenly be a rush to buy machines with the pre-fix chips, making the current iMPs more valuable! Probably just wishful thinking there, but stranger things have happened.
I am betting that this is a typical overhyped story with big implications but little impact. Supposedly it’s been out there for a decade but suddenly it’s a catastrophe, I’m not buying into it.
Hey, it's been a few days since the last catastrophe so surely we must be due another one by now?
Actually people who know me would tell you that I'm usually skeptical about this sort of thing too, but I'm not convinced they're right.
If this was patched in 10.13.2 I didn't see any performance impact. I recently ran geekbench on my MBP to compare against your numbers and it was after this update which was 12/6/2017 and my numbers looked good compared to the numbers for my computer when it came out. I compared to both just to see how things looked and I didn't see a drop in performance and synthetic benchmarks is where this should have hit the hardest. So assuming they did patch this in 10.13.2 (which I doubt they would lie about) I didn't see a performance impact on my MBP and I just ran geekbench a few days ago well after making that update. Sounds like this is because of something called PCID which was already in place and protects against this kind of thing.
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That's part of the nature of 0-days. Either they're patched or they're exploited, over and over again.
Hardware fix will take months, we will see fixed processors in apple products in 2019 in the best case.
Intel obviously had knowledge about this for several months, so I hope we'll see fixed CPUs in Apple products long before 2019. Is this realistic say for a late spring/summer iMac or MBP? Also, can we know more specifics about how this will impact regular users? What kind/type of software will be the most affected? At this point the whole thing is still fairly vague.
It takes a long time from start of development till mass production of new cpu, I'm not sure that we will even see new CPUs in this year and I'm pretty sure that we would not see anything from Apple with these processors.
All major OSes (Windows/Linux/MacOS) are already patched. Performance hit is 5-30% depends on your workload, usually it is <10% unless you do a lot of kernel calls.
From the front page article:Intel Chips Have Memory Access Design Flaw and Fix Could Lead to Performance Drop
So I would say it affects all computers at this time, and you'll need to wait a number of years to see a hardware fix, that is Intel's product pipeline is such that it will be a while before the change makes its way into the chip production portion of their workflow.
Apple is working on a software fix
Intel Memory Access Design Flaw Already Addressed by Apple in macOS 10.13.2
To summarize, if you need a computer now, then get one, the issue being reported is such that its going to be corrected and there's no need to get upset, or hold off on purchasing an iMac.
It's suddenly a catastrophe as the vulnerability has been made public and they've finally fixed the issue via a software workaround where changes to the kernel have been made. Ideally the CPU needed to be replaced, but as that is simply not feasible a software workaround is the solution. It's a bad solution as well as it will affect performance, more so on older hardware.
It's a serious issue and will affect a lot of people, especially in the Windows & Linux world. However, anyone running a CPU which is Skylake and above will be relatively unscathed. Anyone with hardware older than 2014 could be in for a bumpy ride, depending on what they do with their machines. Since macOS was patched in December, benchmarks on latest CPU's show minimal impact. Older CPU's however....
Like most situations, this is a complex situation and people want a simple solution. There is not a simple solution. There is not one error in processor design, there are three errors. The 10.3.2 fixes and the ones in 10.3.3 are to fix the first of the three errors. We do not yet know what the plans are for the other two errors.(Same is true for Windows and Linux) It has been reported ,but I would say ,since Intel is not being very forthcoming with their info for obvious reasons (think major customer relationship damage and lawsuits), not very clearly or factually, that these patches will not cause major slowdowns for most customers. But there will be the need for more patches. We don't know about them yet. Almost all Mac users I would think will see little effects from slowdowns on a fully patched system, due to their workloads. The type of workloads that are most affected (Server) are not run on Macs. It will take Intel a great deal of time to offer fixed processors,from the perspective of those who want to buy them and those that want to sell them. Intel processor design staff will be working their asses off. They are not going to be happy and no one is going to care, as they are the people that put us here in the first place.
So what do you do? IF you need a new system today buy it. It's going to be mostly patched and I don't think you'll ever know that it has been. IF you can wait then do so. It might be a while.
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So what do you do? IF you need a new system today buy it. It's going to be mostly patched and I don't think you'll ever know that it has been. IF you can wait then do so. It might be a while.
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Yes this. But whether the processor will be replaced depends on your situation. If your a consumer or run typical business workloads, no it will not be. You'll be patched and go on with your life until it's time to buy a new system. But if your running a major server farm? You'll not be patching and MAKING your system vendor replace your stuff (servers or blades or processors-which ever is the least possible replacement that fixes the problem).
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Yes, it's over-hyped IMO. It's an information leak, which is bad mostly because you can in theory snoop on stuff you aren't supposed to see. However, it's difficult to exploit, requiring detailed knowledge of processor timings just to read some bits of kernel memory. If you aren't running a server farm then I'd say you generally don't have anything to worry about, even without any fixes. If you are aware of what you're running on your machine, you're OK.
I'm certainly not going to rush out to replace my hardware or patch my OS's because of this issue.
I'm certainly not going to rush out to replace my hardware or patch my OS's because of this issue.
Whatever Intel have in mind for summer 2018 was decided 18-24 months ago minimum.
So unless they knew about it then I doubt there will be any changes. No point holding off purchases unless you can live without a product for the next 18 months.
So unless they knew about it then I doubt there will be any changes. No point holding off purchases unless you can live without a product for the next 18 months.