MP All Models Critical Intel bugs apply to new 2019 Mac Pro?

[mango316]

I fondly remember half year ago Intel disclosed that some of their chips that Apple used affected by some critical bugs. Apple released a patch for it but mentioned that performance would drop to roughly 25%. Although these bugs are hard to implement but still bugs are bugs.

My question is would the new Mac Pro with the new processors coming out in the Fall 2019 also affected by these bugs?

Thanks

 

[tsialex]

No

This is academically debatable since MDS vulnerabilities will always be present while modern processors depends on speculation to get better performance. All modern processors, X86 / ARM / Power etc, are architecturally vulnerable to MDS in a way or another and it's a mitigation process.

The newest Intel processors have a lot of corrections implemented and work a lot better with the current mitigations, and without the performance problems of old processors, but it's not a resolved issue and MDS will be a problem in the future again.

 

[deconstruct60]

I fondly remember half year ago Intel disclosed that some of their chips that Apple used affected by some critical bugs.

My question is would the new Mac Pro with the new processors coming out in the Fall 2019 also affected by these bugs?

Some stuff has hardware fixes and some stuff doesn’t . There are several variants with same root name . The Xeon W-32xx processors are part of the Cascade Lake group of products . If you look at table here

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1330...e-intel-clarifies-whiskey-lake-and-amber-lake

Even the newer stuff still requires OS and /or firmware fixes for some variants of these issues . But the hardware fixes that Intel has worked out are in Cascade Lake.

There were some more somewhat based on similar/same foundation bugs that Intel labeled as MDS . However, Intel again says Cascade Lake has fixes for MDS

“.. MDS is addressed in hardware starting with select 8th and 9th Generation Intel® Core™ processors, as well as the 2nd Generation Intel® Xeon® processor Scalable family ...”
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/mds.html

2nd Generation Xeon Scalable is the official product name for part of Cascade Lake group of products . The W-32xx came out after this press release .


I don’t think anything Apple has released so far has the hardware fixes available . Mac Pro will probably be the first .

Intel’s Ice Lake May not be all that much better on hardware fixes . It has some better hardware for the fixes and some more hardware to help wth the firmware/OS fixes . There is little indication that it closes all known ones with no overhead .

I suspect it will be 2021 until Intel largely cleans these know ones up and remove the need for lots of band-aids . This Mac Pro is unlikely to get those processors ( or anything else Apple does this year ) .

 

[mango316]

Some stuff has hardware fixes and some stuff doesn’t . There are several variants with same root name . The Xeon W-32xx processors are part of the Cascade Lake group of products . If you look at table here

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1330...e-intel-clarifies-whiskey-lake-and-amber-lake

Even the newer stuff still requires OS and /or firmware fixes for some variants of these issues . But the hardware fixes that Intel has worked out are in Cascade Lake.

There were some more somewhat based on similar/same foundation bugs that Intel labeled as MDS . However, Intel again says Cascade Lake has fixes for MDS

“.. MDS is addressed in hardware starting with select 8th and 9th Generation Intel® Core™ processors, as well as the 2nd Generation Intel® Xeon® processor Scalable family ...”
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/mds.html

2nd Generation Xeon Scalable is the official product name for part of Cascade Lake group of products . The W-32xx came out after this press release .


I don’t think anything Apple has released so far has the hardware fixes available . Mac Pro will probably be the first .

Intel’s Ice Lake May not be all that much better on hardware fixes . It has some better hardware for the fixes and some more hardware to help wth the firmware/OS fixes . There is little indication that it closes all known ones with no overhead .

I suspect it will be 2021 until Intel largely cleans these know ones up and remove the need for lots of band-aids . This Mac Pro is unlikely to get those processors ( or anything else Apple does this year ) .

Thank you for your thorough response.