Tests Show Tiny PC Performance Hit From Meltdown, Spectre Fix

Intel, Microsoft, and other companies have warned that some PCs may see performance decreases as a result of security patches to fix the Spectre and Meltdown security flaws disclosed earlier this month. We tested four PCs from a variety of manufacturers that were updated to protect against the flaws and found that while each of the systems did suffer a slowdown in computing performance, it's slight enough that most users won't notice the difference.

The Spectre and Meltdown code names refer to vulnerabilities in the way the CPU anticipates and prepares for future commands in order to perform them faster, a process known as speculative execution. Security researchers found that hackers could theoretically access these commands-in-waiting, which could enable them to steal sensitive information like usernames and passwords.

The speculative execution vulnerability is one of the most significant processor security flaws ever discovered, because it affects so many types of consumer electronic devices. Many products—not just PCs—that contain chips from Intel, ARM, and AMD are susceptible, but it is PCs that have born the brunt of the attention, mainly because fixing the flaws could make them slower.