To fix the critical “Inception” security flaw, AMD was forced to reduce the performance of its Ryzen processors. Fortunately, video games are spared.
There is nothing more critical than a security flaw discovered directly in the architecture of a PC processor. We remember in particular the huge Meltdown and Specter flaws from Intel which had required a lot of effort and updates to be completely corrected by the brand. This time it is AMD which is the target of a discovery with the highlighting of the “Inception” flaw.
This flaw is present on all the brand’s processors marketed since 2017. It allows a malicious person to access a data leak. Its operation is similar to Specter since the exploitation of the flaw goes through the predictive algorithm of the processor. This is an important element of a modern processor that allows it to anticipate certain operations to increase performance. It is possible to manipulate the predictions made by the processor, and therefore to circumvent its expected operation.
To correct this flaw, AMD is offering an update to the microcode of its processors. The website Phoronix started testing CPU performance after the update. The impact can be quite noticeable.
Up to -28% performance on certain tasks
The test results of Phoronix are quite unequal. For example, for video games, the difference in performance measured is around 1%. Which is to say, it’s insignificant. Similarly, office tasks such as file compression with 7Zip show only a 5% difference, more significant, but still acceptable.
It’s on image editing tasks where the difference is heavily felt. Thus, an image rotation on GIMP, the preferred image editing software on GNU/Linux, saw its performance reduced by 28% by the update. Resizing an image took 18% longer after installing the patch.
The rest of the tests carried out by Phoronix are going in the same direction. If you use your AMD machine for creating images or videos, you risk being penalized by updates correcting the Inception flaw. However, it is essential to keep an up-to-date PC to ensure the security of your data.
Hopefully, the firm can improve the performance of its processors with future updates while closing the security hole.
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