Intel's Plan To Fix Meltdown In Silicon Raises More Questions Than Answers

But what silicon?!! Be sure and read the questions Wall Street should have asked.

- Mark Hachman

Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich told investors recently that the firm plans to release silicon with built-in mitigations to the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities later this year, a statement that raises more questions than it answers.

For Intel, it really has been a Tale of Two Cities scenario: Intel reported the best quarter in its history, as fourth-quarter 2017 revenue grew 4 percent year-over-year to $17.1 billion. But Intel has also been the face of Spectre and Meltdown (go.pcworld.com/ spme), two critical vulnerabilities built into basically every processor it ships into the PC and server markets.

Why this matters: Intel has been busy working with PC makers and OS vendors like Microsoft to release microcode that includes so-called mitigations, microcode updates that patch the vulnerabilities. But even that hasn’t gone so well: Intel advised end users to stop applying patches (go.pcworld.com/apat) after systems unexpectedly rebooted. Now, Intel has revealed it’s working on a more permanent fix, but the impact on users remains unknown.

‘SECURITY IS A TOP PRIORITY’

“Security is a top priority for Intel, foundational to our products, and it’s critical to the expanse of our data-centric strategy,” Krzanich told investors in a conference call. “Our near-term focus is on delivering high quality mitigations to protect our customers’ infrastructure from these exploits. We’re working to create silicon-based changes to future products, that will directly address the Spectre and Meltdown threats in hardware. And those products will begin appearing later this year.”