Intel Hyperthreading Bug - Kaby Lake and Skylake

Tomshardware had an article about a hyperthreading bug that has been found in Kaby Lake and Skylake processors.    
I don't see anything in any BIOS updates with anything about it nor do I see any posts in the forum.

I have the ASROCK Z170 Extreme 7 + motherboard.    Anyword on when there might be a bios fix??

It should not impact most people unless you do heavy parallel loads (Such as compiling software for example), or if there's a program that is heavily parallelized and uses a certain set of instructions and loops.

I did encounter it and it screwed my encrypted SSD, but I do keep regular system backups so no big deal really.

I am interested in knowing if ASRock will push updates to their z170 and z270 mainboards though, since they're all affected unless they have the May 2017 microcode included on a very recent update, and the fix is really provided by Intel for Linux in microcode since May.

sotong84 wrote: Hello, I am using the Z270 Taichi and am awaiting a BIOS update. Without which, the processor is unusable for critical tasks.

As discussed in this thread:

http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=5438&title=intel-microcode-bug

It is not known at this time if Intel, the only source of processor microcode updates, has provided a microcode update for Kaby Lake that addresses this issue.

If and when Intel provides a Kaby Lake microcode update for this issue, it will then be added and tested in a new UEFI version, and released.

The best source of information about this would be directly from Intel.

What problems with critical tasks have you been experiencing? I have not personally experienced any problems so far, using hyper threading. Sure it can potentially affect anyone, but that it will affect everyone has not at all been demonstrated.



Edited by parsec - 01 Jul 2017 at 10:01am

To quote from your post:

Originally Posted by Raja@ASUS

Updates for multiple boards. These have not yet been validated, so won't be on the support site until that process is complete. If you cannot wait, here you go:

So Asus is unofficially releasing invalidated UEFI/BIOS updates for this issue at this point. Which also could mean that it is unknown whether or not the new microcode fixes the issue.

There is more to the story than simply, "Here is a post on ASUS site where they are posting that they have bios fixes".

What is ASRock doing wrong?

Although the risk may be low, I don't want to risk having my disk or data trashed, especially if it happens in a way that's not immediately apparent. Or to have other issues and not know if it's the HT bug. So I took the advice and turned HT off.

I have an i7 7700K. If I had wanted an CPU without HT, I could have saved $100 and purchased an i5 7600K.

ASRock, please post an official response here as to whether and when this will be fixed via bios updates. Thanks.