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This is not about saving money! You can't simply shutdown manufacturing of Intel or other chips that have Spectre/Meltdown issues because that would leave us with essentially no usable CPUs for new computers!

The Spectre/Meltdown issues are deep and architectural, not simple to fix. It's not just a batch of CPUs that's the problem, but all of them.

Besides, if a CPU ships with a bug that can be fixed via a microcode patch, then it would be a tremendous economic waste for all humanity to throw those CPUs out.

Even when new CPUs come out that can be shown not to have Spectre/Meltdown issues, it will take a long time to replace the installed base of those that do because it's not a matter of a little bit of money, but a matter of a great deal of money and opportunity costs.

So microcode patches and software mitigations is all there is. Absolutist attitudes don't help.



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