>>https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/02/intel_cpu_design_flaw/
>>
>>Intel (but apparently not AMD) x86-64 CPUs (basically, what everyone's been buying for years) have a severe security vulnerability. This apparently can't be fixed via microcode or BIOS updates so it must be worked around in OSs. This will cause slowdowns on these CPUs, initial estimates are at least 5% performance hit, potentially much more for some use cases.
>>
>>As the article notes, large cloud environments basically run on Intel CPUs and are heavily affected.
>>
>>There's some speculation that patches that fix the issue for supported Windows OSs may arrive as early as Patch Tuesday (January 9th).
>
>I'm so happy to have went for AMD since 2003... And that was because of Intel being all too compliant with then request to deanonymize its chips, i.e. be a big help to Big Brother.

Perf data on AMD vs. Intel was great in Pentium days up to PIV, but in the last years before Ryzen was lousy compared to Intel chips, so I switched back to Intel from pure bred AMD x64 after some Athlon and follow ups.

But as there is nothing guaranteeing AMD to be really bug free (look at the estimated range of years/chips with the flaw) I will dust off an old machine to handle secure things at least, as VM are shown to be less isolated than was hoped. Perhaps revive the "pure surfing desktop" as well, as currently a Linux VM does that... At least my gut steered me right in using tablet for most of internet reading last half dozen years ;-)