Intel's GPUs Face Performance Hits Due to Security Measures
Intel's GPUs may lose up to 20% of their computational power because of security mitigations. This performance drop could be significant, particularly for users on Linux.
Performance Impact of Security Measures in Intel’s GPUs
Older readers may recall the controversy surrounding Spectre and Meltdown—security vulnerabilities affecting CPUs from both AMD and Intel. Today, similar issues seem to arise less frequently in the GPU arena, which often goes unnoticed. However, it’s critical to understand that Intel’s GPUs might be experiencing a performance dip due to these newly implemented security mitigations, reportedly as much as 20%.
Understanding the Impact
This significant drop in performance originates from user reports and a bug report detailed by Ubuntu, revealing that users could potentially disable these mitigations to regain lost compute performance. Developers are now working on making these security features opt-out by default for Intel Graphics Compute applications, allowing users to avoid relinquishing one-fifth of their GPUs’ processing capabilities.
While gamers typically do not operate under these conditions, users in compute-focused environments may want to disable these features for optimal performance, particularly when using Linux applications associated with OpenCL or Intel’s oneAPI Level Zero.
Conclusion
Avoiding up to 20% performance loss can be a game-changer for professionals dependent on these tools, and if you’re engaged in extensive graphical computations, understanding how these mitigations affect your workflow is essential.
