The Intel Xeon vs. AMD EPYC Performance Cost Of Spectre / Meltdown / Foreshadow Mitigations @ Phoronix

I really like it when sites take the time to look at hardware from a different perspective.  It is something I have been known to do but not to this level.

One of the most frequent test requests recently has been to look at the overall performance cost of Meltdown/Spectre mitigations on the latest Linux kernel and now with L1TF/Foreshadow work tossed into the mix. With the Linux 4.19 kernel that just kicked off development this month has been continued churn in the Spectre/Meltdown space, just not for x86_64 but also for POWER/s390/ARM where applicable. For getting an overall look at the performance impact of these mitigation techniques I tested three Intel Xeon systems and two AMD EPYC systems as well as a virtual machine on each side for seeing how the default Linux 4.19 kernel performance -- with relevant mitigations applied -- to that of an unmitigated kernel.

They say planning for the future is also planning for failure by looking at risks before they happen and deciding how to handle them.  Some say Meltdown has been solved while others say it cannot be solved while speculative execution is still enabled.

Ironic isn't it?

Related Web URL: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&ite...