Available Now: Spectre and Meltdown Secured Servers
Ben Erickson October 18 2019 09:11:27
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There have been some OS and firmware fixes that have had various levels of success. Most of them involved decreased speed, some involved instability and crashes. Some were not even really implemented unless you installed the update, then tweaked the windows registry. Ultimately, however, these are hardware, CPU issues that must be fixed in-silicon. Last year, processor manufacturers announced that they would be releasing new, redesigned CPUs that were not vulnerable. Fast forward to October 2019, we are just now starting to see actual products break into the market from AMD. Intel has still not released any silicon hardware-fix CPUs.
To be clear, AMD processors were never vulnerable to Meltdown due to the security architecture. Spectre was still a problem for them, though. And now, their "Zen 2" processors have in-silicon fixes for Spectre-type vulnerabilities. These include the newer Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7, and Ryzen 9 processors of the 3500-3900 varieties.
The good news is we are now seeing some actual servers (no laptops or desktops yet) show up in our distribution channels in real life. Only Lenovo (and HP to a more limited extent) are integrating these processors at this time- they are AMD's early customers for these processors. Before we have advised holding off on server refresh purchases because of these vulnerabilities. But now two years later, we can finally recommend some good, secure servers. So if you're in business and concerned about your company's security- give us a call! We'll get you hooked up!
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