Mitigation
For products where MDS is
not addressed in hardware, Intel is releasing processor microcode updates (MCU) as part of our regular update process with OEMs. These are coupled with corresponding updates to operating system and hypervisor software.
When these mitigations are enabled, minimal performance impacts are expected for the majority of PC client application based benchmarks. Performance or resource utilization on some data center workloads may be affected and may vary accordingly.
Once these updates are applied, it may be appropriate
for some customers to consider additional steps
. This includes customers who cannot guarantee that trusted software is running on their system(s) and are using Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT). In these cases, customers should consider how they utilize SMT for their particular workload(s), guidance from their OS and VMM software providers, and the security threat model for their particular environment. Because these factors will vary considerably by customer, Intel is not recommending that Intel® HT be disabled, and it’s important to understand that doing so does not
alone provide protection against MDS.