See this recent news posting --
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-intel/design-flaw-found-in-intel-chips-fix-causes-them-to-slow-report-idUSKBN1ES1BO
Apparently all Intel chips from within the past 10 years have a design flaw which could compromise the security of a system. OS-level patches will have to be released. However, get this:
“The effects are being benchmarked, however we are looking at a ballpark figure of a five to 30 percent slowdown, depending on the task and the processor model.”
5-30% slowdown?! Is that for real?? I'm sad for the negative effect this will have on scientific compute power. Maybe I will switch to AMD for my next computer :/