ZombieLoad is the latest in a series of high-profile security holes that have come to the attention of Intel processors, and it seems that many friends and allies of the chipmaker are running out of patience with the company.
As with previous security flaws such as Meltdown and Specter, the disclosure of ZombieLoad, which potentially allows malicious hackers to steal private browsing history, passwords and other information, has led companies such as Microsoft, Apple and Google rush to correct the impact of errors.
You don't have to work tirelessly to solve a problem related to another company's product that will never go down well. And while Intel's top partners have mostly remained diplomatically silent in the face of their frustration at having to fix yet another Intel hardware security flaw, their engineers must have been deeply frustrated.
Just look at the noise coming from the open source community. Open source developers can talk more freely about their boredom with Intel and its latest security because no business relationship is required, no NDAs or gentlemen's agreements need to be signed. The open source community is not well known for biting their tongues when something bothers them.
Take the Linux kernel 5.1.2 release notes from Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux kernel stable maintainer, released after ZombieLoad. As he points out, "As I said a little over a year ago, Intel has again turned to many people who have consumed many drinks to have corrected hardware problems in our software."
Surely there are plenty of developers at the biggest tech companies who will agree with him.
How long will Intel partners tolerate having to resolve security issues with Intel hardware?
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performance hits
While many companies have released mitigation measures against ZombieLoad, the problem doesn't stop there. Most of the fixes involve disabling threads, a feature that generates virtualized processor cores to improve multitasking performance and has dramatic consequences on performance after patching.
If your Mac suddenly starts to slow down, you run the risk of blaming Apple rather than Intel.
For example, Apple has revealed that with the ZombieLoad patch installed, performance could drop by 40%, which would have a particular impact on Macs with multi-core processors. This is pretty much every modern Mac used today.
At the same time, the Phoronix website has thoroughly analyzed the impact ZombieLoad performance mitigations have on Linux machines, and the results are not good.
Not only will this annoy customers who see their expensive devices degrade, but it's also not very interesting for manufacturers. If your Mac suddenly starts to slow down, you run the risk of blaming Apple rather than Intel.
It's no secret that Apple has planned to break away from Intel and configure its own processors to power its Mac devices. After hinting that the recent shortage of Intel processors was responsible for the decline in Mac sales (and prompting us to suggest that Apple should buy AMD), this new security vulnerability - and the impact of its mitigation measures on performance, could further deteriorate the relationship between Apple and Intel.
Therefore, Intel quickly loses friends. Is there something he can do? Well, aside from stopping releasing material containing major security issues, that is.
Project Athena's collaborative approach could save Intel.
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Help us, Project Athena, you are our only hope.
Intel's partners are apparently frustrated by the hardware maker, so he must be hopeful that his Athena initiative will pay off.
If laptop makers and software developers finally get confused with Intel, we could see them switch to Qualcomm's hardware and ARM.
Project Athena hopes that Intel is working closely with manufacturers to develop the next generation of laptops. While it doesn't solve many of its partners' problems, by collaborating more closely, Intel and companies like Microsoft, Google, and Dell can help design future hardware without major security vulnerabilities.
The Athena project is expected to produce laptops that can meet the demands of today's users: providing a seamlessly connected 5G internet connection, extended battery life and significantly shorter boot-up times.
These are all the features of Windows on Snapdragon Devices (WOS). The WOS laptops run on Qualcomm's Snapdragon hardware, making it a standalone threat to Intel. If laptop makers and software developers finally get confused with Intel, we could see them switch to Qualcomm and other ARM hardware.
This means that the success of Project Athena is more important than ever to Intel. If it can produce hardware free of the major security holes we've found recently, while collaborating with its partners and fighting off competition from Qualcomm and a resurrected AMD, Project Athena could save Intel.
If that wasn't possible, the blue team could be in serious trouble and she might not find her old friends so eager to help her in the future.
Image credits: Nyoman Arya Suartawan / Shutterstock