Linux 4.15: After the first reactions from the appearance of Meltdown and Specter, came the first fixes. We already know that these patches will slow down our systems, but, at least for Linux, these slowdowns may not be as obvious 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, version 4,17 of 2017.
These are the good news. The bad news is that, with KPTI (Kernel page-table isolation), version 4.14 is 1- to 2% more slow from 4.11.
However, as Kroah-Hartman pointed out:
"So we're right behind where we started, which makes me feel good, because the recent changes that Meltdown has brought are not really that much of a problem."
Of course, "developers who have worked so hard to achieve this 7-9 percent increase over the past year 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.
