Intel will release updates for both Spectre and Meltdown for 90% of its processors by the end of next week


Intel has issued a press release, claiming that it will release updates for more than 90 percent of its processor products introduced within the past five years. Moreover, the blue team has already issued updates for the majority of processor products introduced within the past five years.

As the press release reads:

“Intel has already issued updates for the majority of processor products introduced within the past five years. By the end of next week, Intel expects to have issued updates for more than 90 percent of processor products introduced within the past five years. In addition, many operating system vendors, public cloud service providers, device manufacturers and others have indicated that they have already updated their products and services.”

Intel also claimed that the performance impact for the average user is not significant. And while we did notice some performance differences when we applied the “Meltdown” security fix, most of them were within the margin of error. The only game that showed a noticeable performance hit was Assassin’s Creed: Origins. We don’t know why this is happening, however, that’s what our tests suggested.

As Intel concluded:

“Intel continues to believe that the performance impact of these updates is highly workload-dependent and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time. While on some discrete workloads the performance impact from the software updates may initially be higher, additional post-deployment identification, testing and improvement of the software updates should mitigate that impact.”