The first revelations pointed to a possible massive error in the design of Intel’s CPUs. The solution, as noted, would slow down millions of computers. The company came to the news a few hours later, assuring that “many devices, processors and operating systems” are also susceptible to these vulnerabilities. Hours later, another vulnerability was published that not only affected Intel, but also AMD and ARM: Meltdown and Specter.

In the last hours, two days after the first news leaked, Intel has issued a statement in which it presents its update plans to ensure that all types of computer systems based on Intel, including computers and servers, “are immune” to both vulnerabilities.

By the end of next week

According to the manufacturer of integrated circuits, they have published “updates for most of the processor products presented in the last five years” for both domestic and business. From Intel, in addition, expect to have issued updates for more than 90% of the processors released in the last five years.

The text adds that “many operating system providers, public service providers in the cloud, device manufacturers and others have indicated that they have already updated their products and services.” Although as we have seen some updates, such as Windows, have had some problems.

However, it is not indicated when they will receive older processor updates . At first it was estimated that the processors affected by these vulnerabilities would be those manufactured during the last decade, but recent reports suggest that those of the last twenty years could be affected .

“The impact on performance should not be significant”

As in his first statements, Intel reiterates that the performance will hardly be affected by these updates as pointed out, noting that the patches would bring with it decreases in power of up to 30%. It believes that the impact of these patches on the operation of the processors depends to a large extent on the workload and, for the average computer user, they assure that “it should not be significant and will be mitigated with time”.

They also add that the impact could be initially greater “in some specific workloads”, although “the additional identification after the implementation, testing and improvement of software updates should mitigate that impact”. The system updates, they specify, “are available through system manufacturers, operating system vendors and others.”

Finally, the company recommends computer users around the world to use the automatic update features of their respective operating systems to keep up.