Newsletter Archives

• Is Recall in your future?

  Posted on December 9, 2024 at 02:42 CST by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  ON SECURITY

  

  By Susan Bradley

  Don’t panic.

  Microsoft Recall, the new Microsoft technology that records what you are doing on a Windows 11 PC so you can review (“recall”) past actions in the future, is very much in beta right now and not coming to a computer near you.

  Importantly, Recall has a high bar as far as system requirements are concerned. First, a Copilot+PC is required. For some time, the only processors that could provide the necessary power were Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series, Arm-based processors with the Hexagon neural processing unit. (If you want to learn more about NPUs, see IBM’s article What is a neural processing unit (NPU)?) On December 6, Microsoft announced Windows Insider preview build versions for AMD and Intel-powered Copilot+ PCs, a signal that a wider variety of hardware will soon be available.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.50.0, 2024-12-09).

  On Security AMD, Copilot, Copilot+ PCs, Intel, Newsletters, Qualcomm, Recall, Secured-core Standard

• With its Radeon graphics technology, AMD is a powerhouse

  Posted on May 30, 2022 at 02:44 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  SILICON

  

  By Brian Livingston

  At today’s breakneck pace of technological change, the semiconductor industry’s product cycles run faster than a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest. This month, the scrappy multinational chip company AMD tried to kick some butt by claiming that its newest GPUs (graphics processing units) deliver far better price/performance ratios than Nvidia’s.

  The predictable result was a good ol’ pissing match between the two archrivals. But this takes nothing away from the fact that both AMD and Nvidia — as well as the industry’s Old Faithful, Intel — are permanently changing our expectations about how fast our machines can compute for a given fistful of dollars.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.22.0, 2022-05-30).

  Silicon AMD, Newsletters, Radeon, Silicon

• Microsoft apparently reinstates Meltdown/Spectre patches for some AMD processors

  Posted on January 11, 2018 at 11:22 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Of course, predictably, nobody’s saying which ones are now back on the patch list.

  Computerworld Woody on Windows.

  Thx @MrBrian

  UPDATE: Just got this from JA:

  Just read your referenced article. Thank you! It explains to me why update KB4056894 fails on my laptop running Windows 7. You mentioned that it isn’t clear whether the AMD embargo includes Intel PCs with AMD video cards. FYI … Apparently it does. I have a Dell laptop with an Intel Core i7 processor, and an AMD Radeon HD 7670M graphics card. Once again, thanks for your informative article.

  Anybody else out there with AMD video cards that are getting the treatment – or drivers that are failing after installing this month’s security patches?

  UPDATE: Although it doesn’t explain which machines were yanked in the initial round, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster has posted some updated information:

  Microsoft is distributing patches for the majority of AMD systems now. We are working closely with them to correct an issue that paused the distribution of patches for some older AMD processors (AMD Opteron, Athlon and AMD Turion X2 Ultra families) earlier this week. We expect this issue to be corrected shortly and Microsoft should resume updates for these older processors by next week.

  Windows Patches/Security AMD, Meltdown, Spectre

• Microsoft yanks all of this month’s Windows patches for “devices with impacted AMD processors”

  Posted on January 9, 2018 at 05:49 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Let’s hear it for beta testing.

  Early this morning, Microsoft officially announced that it was pulling all of this month’s Meltdown/Spectre patches for folks with AMD processors.

  That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

  Computerworld Woody on Windows.

  UPDATE: Kevin Beaumont has a sobering report on the status of antivirus vendors cooperating (or not) with Microsoft:

  this has been incredibly messy for everybody involved. My belief is organisations shouldn’t rush these patches out. They need to carefully test and see where they need to mitigate the vulnerability.

  As I’ve said many, many times before, there’s no reason to install any of the patches yet. In spite of what you saw on TV, or read in the newspaper — or what you heard from a Windows security “expert.”

  Windows Patches/Security AMD, KB 4056888, KB 4056890, KB 4056891, KB 4056892, KB 4056893, KB 4056894, KB 4056897, KB 4056898