Intel to disable insecure TSX feature on older CPUs

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Jun 30, 2021.

  1. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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    Intel has decided to deactivate Transactional Sync Extensions in Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Whiskey Lake processor chips. Intel deactivates the feature because of memory ordening errors and ....

    Intel to disable insecure TSX feature on older CPUs
     
  2. cucaulay malkin

    cucaulay malkin Ancient Guru

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    [​IMG]
     
  3. KissSh0t

    KissSh0t Ancient Guru

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    I wonder if this is to get those chips "ready" for Windows 11? ... if that makes sense?
     
  4. Venix

    Venix Ancient Guru

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    Will this have an impact to performance ? Maybe no impact ? Small ? Just on specific cases ?
     

  5. asturur

    asturur Maha Guru

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    if it hasn't that 40% claim was bullshit in first place.

    I think it depends if this tsx extension was explicitly used by software or used by microcode in order to perform other instrucions
     
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  6. asturur

    asturur Maha Guru

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    @hilbert will you make a small test for the science?
     
  7. fellix

    fellix Master Guru

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    TSX was problematic from its first iteration in Haswell. The RPCS3 emulator still supports it, but it's disabled by default and not recommended to be forced on due to possibility of fatal data corruption.
    It's a nice performance feature to have, particularly with multi-thread intensive code, but implementation and validation in hardware is rather tricky and the strict memory ordering in x86 certainly makes it extra demanding.
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2021
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  8. rl66

    rl66 Ancient Guru

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    nearly none (as exept bug it already bring nearly none).
    Sometime something big on paper isn't so great in real condition.
     
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  9. Venix

    Venix Ancient Guru

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    Ok at least this is something still sucks but even if people really have to disable it they will not loose perfomance :)
     
  10. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    So Haswell keeps it? Making it probably faster than the CPUs later on... oh Intel, you and your after sale cuts to performance because of "security" reasons.
     
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  11. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    yah more thing cripple my cpu?

    According Hwinfo I have TXS enabled and running.

    Dont see how disabling thing would make compatible but then again it security flaw? that been around since 2016? that intel is just now "disabling"
     
  12. insp1re2600

    insp1re2600 Ancient Guru

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    could always get ya wallet out and upgrade?
     
  13. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    you gona put the money in that wallet? :rolleyes:

    Fat chance in hell i upgrade anything with current prices and issues and what not. let lone for OS.

    I get my 60FPS target in all my games I play, Short of game like Cyberpunk 2077 which I dont own for pc
     
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  14. illrigger

    illrigger Master Guru

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    There has been a lot of speculation that MS is limiting the supported CPUs to ones that have hardware fixes for Spectre and/or Meltdown. There really isn't an actual fix for those flaws, and OS engineers still spend a lot of time coding new fixes to block emerging exploits to them. It would make sense that they want to move beyond it if they want an actual secure OS, and that by removing support for most of Intel's installed base it forces them to actually disable the parts of the CPUs that cause them.
     
  15. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    do we eveh have cpu with "hardware" fixes for those cause last i checked even newer cpu still effected by those flaws.


    Etiher way it dont mater to me
     

  16. MegaFalloutFan

    MegaFalloutFan Maha Guru

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    Right now TSX is important for PS3 emulation, no other reasons really.
    My backup PC has ES 10900K so TSX works and cant be disabled.
     
  17. teleguy

    teleguy Maha Guru

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    According to other articles the feature has already been disabled ages ago on Haswell and Broadwell since it never worked properly there.
     
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  18. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    Ah that's what they disabled. I vaguely remember something about that. I guess I really missed it in the meantime. Still the situation has some irony to it, imho.
     
  19. Alessio1989

    Alessio1989 Ancient Guru

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    TSX is still a thing in RPCS3, but they improved performance without it as well 1 year ago. https://rpcs3.net/blog/2020/08/21/hardware-performance-scaling/
     
  20. user1

    user1 Ancient Guru

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    colour me surprised that intel managed to bork the feature twice
     

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