How do you test for Spectre/Meltdown vulnerability? In what CPU will it be fixed at hardware level?

[oblongpolygon]

Two questions:

1. How do you test or check for Spectre / Meltdown vulnerability?
2. Do we know, yet, in what CPU these will be fixed at hardware level? So will 9th generation Intel CPU's be "immune" for example?

I ask the second question because it seems like new "variants" of the above vulnerabilities are being (or have been) discovered, so... and with each new patch, I understand we can expect further slowdown.

So, the cumulative slowdown of patching all the variants could be in the 15% to 30% range.. or so I'm reading / heading.

If the slowdown is going to be that high, I'm just going to upgrade the CPU when a CPU, which isn't vulnerable, becomes available.

(Of course, I understand that vulnerabilities for that later CPU could soon be discovered, and then we start all over again.)

(I have an 8th generation Intel CPU currently.)

 

[spine]

1. http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/download-inspectre-meltdown-and-spectre-check-tool.html

2. There are no hardware fixes for either in any Intel CPUs to date, AMD is only vulnerable to Spectre I believe.

 

[the_real_7]

Theres not going to be a cpu that has a hardware fix that doesnt get a perfomance hit for years , problem is they build 3 generations ahead to keep up with the curve. Why do you really think every CPU cycle we only get 10 to 15 percent improvements a year. The intel CPU as we know it has to be built from the ground up becuase this was a main internal part of there CPU and most for the part.

 

[dvsman]

This was the main reason I decided to do an AMD build to replace my aging Intel box. I wanted to keep at least one of each but ...

While people are saying current AMD is still not as fast as current Intel - they are also forgetting that AMD (by quirk of design) is not as vulnerable on a hardware level as Intel is and won't require as much patching AFAIK. And since Intel is not going to be redesigning their entire architecture any time soon - that weakness is likely to persist for a few more generations at least.

If and when Intel comes back to parity on cores, "patched" performance and price - I'll give them another go but at the moment, it looks like it's going to be awhile.