Intel reveals Meltdown and Spectre fix slow-down cost

The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities that were discovered last week are very bad news, and though Intel has been quick to roll out patches for them, the measures it had to take aren't exactly ideal. Specifically, these patches come with a performance hit for Intel systems, and in the lead up to their delivery, some benchmarks showed that the potential slowdown could be as high as 30%. While Meltdown and Spectre are issues that absolutely need to be defended against, the looming slowdown that accompanied these patches was still a bitter pill for Intel users to swallow.