Hello,
There are tons of articles about Meltdown/Spectre issue and about upcoming solutions. As far I understand, it's a CPU (by design) flaw, still it seems "everyone" is working on solution: CPU makers, MB makers, OS makers, Browser makers, etc. And here my confusion starts:
Do we need to apply patches for all hardware and software we use?? I mean, I would assume, that patch for BIOS and OS would be enough to be protected. Now I see Firefox's latest update included patch for Meltdown!? I mean.. it's just a browser, sitting on top of OS (which is already patched). But, if browser need to be patched, what about other stuff we maybe use?
And at the end, after all necessary patches are installed, how will that impact performance? To my eyes it will be like all software is running on CPU emulation.
I hope my writing makes sense to you... To sumarize: how many patches do we need?
There are tons of articles about Meltdown/Spectre issue and about upcoming solutions. As far I understand, it's a CPU (by design) flaw, still it seems "everyone" is working on solution: CPU makers, MB makers, OS makers, Browser makers, etc. And here my confusion starts:
Do we need to apply patches for all hardware and software we use?? I mean, I would assume, that patch for BIOS and OS would be enough to be protected. Now I see Firefox's latest update included patch for Meltdown!? I mean.. it's just a browser, sitting on top of OS (which is already patched). But, if browser need to be patched, what about other stuff we maybe use?
And at the end, after all necessary patches are installed, how will that impact performance? To my eyes it will be like all software is running on CPU emulation.
I hope my writing makes sense to you... To sumarize: how many patches do we need?