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And an interesting follow-on question would be: of the OS patches now being implemented which sometimes cause a performance hit, will that code later be able to detect when it's running on a "fixed" processor? So that it can turn off the unneeded extra protections when running on a newer chip?

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Last I checked: the linux kernel initially had a comment saying something to the effect of "assume all x86 processors are vulnerable." Later, they added a check for amd, which they don't do mitigations on. It seems likely they'll add another check, when future processors come out. As for windows and macosx, it's up for speculation. No other OSes yet have mitigations in place.

Another interesting follow one (I think): if the OS patches cause the performance hit, would the hardware fix not cause the same (or similar) performance impact?

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