Intel has made it clear that the next CPUs it introduces in 2018, the second part of its eighth-generation, Coffee Lake range, will not have the same exploitable attack vectors for the Spectre and Meltdown bugs. Although Intel hasn't said what those new chips will be, considering the Coffee Lake range is already well stocked with options, it could well be that we're talking about possible 8th-generation Core i9 CPUs, which would give AMD's upcoming Zen+ Threadripper chips a run for their money.
Spectre and Meltdown have been two nasty, scary bugs that were discovered last year to affect just about every CPU released over the past couple of decades. Although there have been no real examples of these bugs being exploited in the wild, there's real concern that they could be and if they were, the results could be far-reaching. Fortunately, Microsoft, Intel, AMD and motherboard manufacturers have been quick to issue fixes and patches, along with BIOS updates to shore up systems.
Where the first variant of Spectre can be shored up completely with software though, the only true way to protect against these bugs is with new hardware and that's purportedly what the next Coffee Lake.
"These changes will begin with our next-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors (code-named Cascade Lake)," writes Intel's Krzanich (via PCGamesN). "As well as 8th Generation Intel Core processors expected to ship in the second half of 2018.
"As we bring these new products to market, ensuring that they deliver the performance improvements people expect from us is critical. Our goal is to offer not only the best performance, but also the best secure performance."
Since he doesn't say explicitly these will be Core i9s, it's also possible that it will simply be a refresh of existing Coffee Lake chips, but that does seem like a wasted opportunity.
What kind of chips do you think we'll be seeing from this refresh?
Source: ElooKon/Wikimedia
