Linux 4.15: After the first reactions from the appearance of the meltdown και Specter, ήρθαν και οι πρώτες επιδιορθώσεις. Γνωρίζουμε ήδη ότι αυτά τα patches they will slow down our systems, but, at least for Linux, those slowdowns may not be as noticeable as we thought they would be.
Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux developer kernel, stated that the latest Linux kernel, 4.15 is 7-9% faster than the version released on April 30, 2017, 4,17 version 2017.
These are the good news. The bad news is that, with KPTI (Kernel page-table isolation), version 4.14 is 1- to 2% slower than 4.11.
However, as Kroah-Hartman pointed out:
"So we're right back where we started, which makes me feel good, since the recent changes brought by Meltdown aren't really that much problem".
Of course, “the developers who worked so hard to achieve that 7-9 percent increase during duration of last year they may not be so happy."
Meanwhile, at Phoronix, a website specializing in Linux benchmarking, the Michael Larabel, owner and developer, found – in a recent test of Linux Kernels (Linux 4.0 to 4.15) – that while there are “some downtime when using Linux 4.15 Kernels… at least in some of the benchmarks, performance from Linux 4.15 is not at the lowest levels we have seen in the benchmarks of these versions over the last three years. "
Kroah-Hartman concluded that "if you are using an older version of the Kernel (ie one of 3.10.y, 4.4.y or 4.9.y), this is a completely different story."
"Change to a newer version and compare!"
Here, add that, regardless of performance improvement, Meltdown and Specter vulnerabilities will need to be repaired.
Meltdown and Specter: They will happen again… and again
Let us mention, however, that Intel should also be more aware… so that the developers of every operating system that is released do not pay for it.