You hear about Intel meltdown?

[Nedkel]

I wonder will it affect consoles, MS official said the problem will not affect xbox consoles, but how about ps4? anyone know?

[aesteval]

From what I hear, if you're the only one using your computer, you don't really have anything to worry about.

No. Just because you're the only person using your computer doesn't mean that you're the only one running code on it. If you spend time on the internet, you never know what might be executing that you're not aware of. Granted data centers have additional things to worry about, but it doesn't mean you're safe.

[aesteval]

Heard about it and updated.

My take is that it affects mostly high CPU utilization applications, so you'd be talking about data centers and servers where it is important to get the most out of your CPU time. For us regular folks, the vast majority of the time our CPU isn't anywhere remotely near 100% utilization. For example I'm using a relatively old Xeon E3-1230v2 and most of the times in FFXIV I don't see anything over 70% utilization. Even if I'm hit with a 30% performance degradataion, I doubt I'd feel anything since a lot of what we feel are actually GPU related, not CPU related.

Don't forget that XIV performance also relies on server performance. "Server limitations" is a known phrase for us.

[aesteval]

I wonder will it affect consoles, MS official said the problem will not affect xbox consoles, but how about ps4? anyone know?

I think Microsoft and Sony are both using AMD for their consoles and AMD is quite insistent that they're unaffected by Meltdown.

The Switch uses ARM and some ARM processors are affected. Not sure if the Switch uses any that are.

That all said, there's also another similar exploit called Spectre that isn't being patched for that potential affects all recent processors.

[Zeonx]

Question is what kind of chip are they using for the servers that run the game?

Is the servers run on high end intel processors or AMD.

[LalaRu]

OMG a BUG has found in the processors!!! The world will melt.
This bug ain't more or less dangerous than all the dozens of zero-day laying in the hacker's lists. It is just some fuel for the press (to let us buy new hardware soon?). Or you all really feel you were more secure without this bug around?
The perfect software doesn't exists, and same applies to firmware too. Live with it.

[i3oi3o]

Don't forget that XIV performance also relies on server performance. "Server limitations" is a known phrase for us.

I think FF14's server is designed to scale.

Very likely, they choose available server instance which don't have much load and spawn a process to run.
Imaging this process as dungeon instance, each world map etc.

Not likely that a process will consume a lot of CPU except one scenario, 100 people enter the same map to hunt Rank S which very likely causes the process to consume CPU to almost full.

[lulunami]

OMG a BUG has found in the processors!!! The world will melt.
This bug ain't more or less dangerous than all the dozens of zero-day laying in the hacker's lists. It is just some fuel for the press (to let us buy new hardware soon?). Or you all really feel you were more secure without this bug around?
The perfect software doesn't exists, and same applies to firmware too. Live with it.

Any hardware bug that accidentally gives user applications (Ring 3) access to Ring 0 kernel memory is a very serious bug. If left unpatched, visiting a nefarious website could potentially expose sensitive data like passwords. Passwords to stuff like banking or security accounts. If that is so passe to you, I do not know what else to say.

[aesteval]

OMG a BUG has found in the processors!!! The world will melt.
This bug ain't more or less dangerous than all the dozens of zero-day laying in the hacker's lists. It is just some fuel for the press (to let us buy new hardware soon?). Or you all really feel you were more secure without this bug around?

No. The big deal that's being made about it is due to mitigation processes that are being implemented to rectify the exploit: OS level changes that will force a performance hit to some extent due to making things run safer but less efficient. People were just making a big deal about Apple slowing processor performance in iPhones when the phone has an older battery. This is slowing performance on a much wider scale but for different reasons. Theoretically, anyone who paid a premium for an Intel chip in the past 10+ years will no longer have access to the same level of chip they purchased.

[aesteval]

I think FF14's server is designed to scale.

Very likely, they choose available server instance which don't have much load and spawn a process to run.
Imaging this process as dungeon instance, each world map etc.

Not likely that a process will consume a lot of CPU except one scenario, 100 people enter the same map to hunt Rank S which very likely causes the process to consume CPU to almost full.

I'm actually thinking about everything to do with inventory and items in XIV's case. We're getting a saddlebag and not more inventory slots for a reason. However it's been designed would be with a certain margin of performance expectations in mind and if the servers do take a performance hit because of this it could be a really nasty goal post shift. A lot of speculation, but concerns (we don't know what hardware the servers are even running or what risk there may be to leave them unpatched.)