AMD plans to release Spectre-proof processors — but you probably can’t get them until 2019 (AMD)

pulse

January 31, 2018 6:32 PM

AMD's Zen 2 chips will have built-in protection, but there's no word about the Zen+ chips coming in April this year.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said it Zen 2 chips will come with built-in protection against the Spectre vulnerability.
It's expected that the Zen 2 chips will be released in 2019.
There was no mention that the Zen+ chips, a different product line coming in April 2018, will come with built-in protection.
AMD's chips aren't vulnerable to Meltdown, a related bug to Spectre. Meltdown primarily affects Intel processors.

AMD's forthcoming lineup of Zen 2 processors will have built-in protection against the Spectre chip vulnerability, said CEO Lisa Su on the company's earnings call on Tuesday afternoon.

First disclosed by Google earlier in January, Spectre takes advantage of a vulnerability in "speculative execution," a feature of almost every modern processor, to give an attacker a potential route to stealing private information from otherwise secure systems. Intel, too, is rushing to get Spectre-proof chips to market.

AMD announced its Zen 2 lineup at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, with the chips expected to launch in 2019. The company also has another line of processors, the Zen+, arriving in April 2018, but Su did not say that those chips will come with the built-in protections.

Despite the fallout from Meltdown and Spectre, AMD posted a solid quarter, beating Wall Street estimates on the top and bottom line. The stock is up almost 6% to $13.61 a share at the time of writing.

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