From the article:

"What makes this a little different are the eight-core products. In order to make these, Intel had to create new die masks for the manufacturing line, as their previous masks only went up to six cores (and before that, four cores). This would, theoretically, give Intel a chance to implement some of the hardware mitigations for Spectre/Meltdown. As of the time of writing, we have not been given any indication that this is the case, perhaps due to the core design being essentially a variant of Skylake in a new processor. We will have to wait until a new microarchitecture comes to the forefront to see any changes."