[WARNING] Intel Skylake/Kaby Lake processors: broken hyper-threading

[jonp]

We discovered a thread we found in the Debian mailing list that documents an issue with Intel processors of both the Skylake and Kaby Lake families.  You can read the thread yourself for a complete debrief on the issue, but here is the synopsis, as also documented in the thread from the mailing list:

 

Quote

This advisory is about a processor/microcode defect recently identified
on Intel Skylake and Intel Kaby Lake processors with hyper-threading
enabled.  This defect can, when triggered, cause unpredictable system
behavior: it could cause spurious errors, such as application and system
misbehavior, data corruption, and data loss.

It was brought to the attention of the Debian project that this defect
is known to directly affect some Debian stable users (refer to the end
of this advisory for details), thus this advisory.

Please note that the defect can potentially affect any operating system
(it is not restricted to Debian, and it is not restricted to Linux-based
systems).  It can be either avoided (by disabling hyper-threading), or
fixed (by updating the processor microcode).

Due to the difficult detection of potentially affected software, and the
unpredictable nature of the defect, all users of the affected Intel
processors are strongly urged to take action as recommended by this
advisory.

 

Due to the nature of this issue, we are recommending all affected users do the following:

 

1. Read the Debian mailing list post regarding this issue to confirm your CPU is affected.
2. Check to see if there is a BIOS update available for your hardware.
3. If no BIOS update is available, disable Hyperthreading in your system BIOS immediately.

 

We are looking into providing a way to allow users to apply a microcode update as a workaround that allows you to temporarily patch out of this bug on a per-boot basis, but until that time, users with these systems need to consider it risky to continue using the Hyperthreading feature.

[boxer74]

Any ETA on this update?

 

 

 

[SSD]

There were several posts in this thread. What happened?

[JonathanM]

39 minutes ago, bjp999 said:

There were several posts in this thread. What happened?

Different thread. Multiple threads were posted in different sections almost simultaneously.