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Intel Clears Up Microcode Licensing Controversy - Simpler License, Allows Benchmarking

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  • Intel Clears Up Microcode Licensing Controversy - Simpler License, Allows Benchmarking

    Phoronix: Intel Clears Up Microcode Licensing Controversy - Simpler License, Allows Benchmarking

    Over the past day online there has been lots of controversy following some high-profile sites reporting about Intel's "un-friendly microcode license update" and its "ban on benchmarking", among other catch phrases. It's now been officially cleared up by Intel with a simpler license that doesn't forbid benchmarking, allows distribution vendors to re-distributed these binary files to their users, and doesn't have any other nastiness integrated into the legal text...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Ban on benchmarking? I guess they did this because they know Meltdown and Spectre and <insert vulnerability here> have been hurting them...
    Last edited by tildearrow; 23 August 2018, 04:03 PM.

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    • #3
      Thanks Michael. I thought you handled the situation well for what it's worth.

      It's no secret that I've been picky about my microcode's these days (using 22 instead of 25 on my Haswell). 22 was pre-Spectre/Meltdown, and since I disable all the mitigations in my boot parameters, I don't see any reason to slow down my machine.

      I use Strict Site Isolation in my browsers, and I think that's good enough for me. Obviously for the wider industry, cloud providers, and the majority of others, this isn't a viable option, so yeah, I can understand why we're all pissed off. I'm just saying I turned that shit off and my system is flying.

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      • #4
        Now is not the time for Intel to be arrogant.

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        • #5
          How on earth was they going to stop that exactly ?

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          • #6
            They just tried it, it could pass.. as other nasty things and after that it would be too late..

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            • #7
              Intel is going to die a horrible death, once everything is moved on with ARM (no matter for their license to fuck around with ARM cpus)

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              • #8
                This license ... just doesn't allow reverse-engineering/disassembly.
                Shouldn't be legal to write stuff like this

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by Xicronic View Post
                  Shouldn't be legal to write stuff like this
                  It's just as legal to keep you from knowing how pacemaker software works, even if your life depends on it .

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                  • #10
                    I have the feeling that's a licence they apply to unreleased/preview software they send to partners for testing, and that somehow leaked into a mainstream release.
                    Otherwise it would be literal PR foot-shooting.

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