Microsoft says patches slowing down PCs

Washington : Microsoft Corp said yesterday the patches released to guard against Meltdown and Spectre security threats slowed down some personal computers and servers, with systems running on older Intel Corp processors seeing a noticeable decrease in performance.

The security updates also froze some computers running AMD chipsets, Microsoft said in a blog post, citing customer complaints.

Shares in Intel, which reiterated on Tuesday that it saw no sign of significant slowdown in computers, fell 1.4 percent, while those of AMD fell nearly 4pc.

“We (and others in the industry) had learned of this vulnerability under nondisclosure agreement several months ago and immediately began developing engineering mitigations and updating our cloud infrastructure,” Microsoft executive Terry Myerson wrote in a blog post. Security researchers disclosed the flaws on Jan. 3 that affected nearly every modern computing device containing chips from Intel, AMD and ARM Holdings.