This critical flaw has been updated by the British site The Register. It concerns almost all Intel CPUs of the last 10 years. Whatever the OS, an update of the operating systems will be necessary, with undoubtedly heavy consequences in terms of performance.
At this stage, no data has been published officially, but a potential loss of 30% performance is mentioned. What is certain is that once the patch is installed, Intels processors will be slower than before. All operating systems are obviously concerned by this major flaw that would open access to the kernel memory. Its exploitation by hackers would then deliver all the confidential information and passwords stored on the machines equipped with a faulty Intel CPU.
Patch tests are currently in progress. Since November, they have been spotted by users of Linux and Windows Insider. The content of these updates is kept secret by Microsoft, which suggests that the scope of the patch could be large. According to the results of the first tests, losses of 5% to 30% of the performance levels are to be expected.