AMD's stock price takes a hit after clearing up confusion about its security flaws (AMD)

pulse

January 12, 2018 4:01 PM

AMD shares have risen on confusion as to whether its CPUs were affected by the Spectre flaw.

AMD shares have risen on confusion as to whether its CPUs were affected by the Spectre flaw.
The company has clearly said its chips are affected, and the stock is sliding.

AMD is trading 1.61% lower to $11.93 after the company cleared up confusion about whether its products were affected by the CPU security flaws that have been rocking the tech world this year.

The security issues known as Spectre and Meltdown were first announced by Google engineers on January 3. The engineers said the flaws could be used to exploit Intel, AMD, and ARM-based chips.

The confusion came when AMD said its chips were not affected by all three variants of CPU flaw, which some people took to mean its chips were invulnerable. AMD clarified its susceptibility late on Thursday, saying its chips were affected, but only by two of the three variants.

Confusion around the Spectre and Meltdown flaws have been rampant as many of the major tech companies rush to patch their products. Intel and AMD have been working on patches for their processors while Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, and others have been working to patch their servers and operating systems.

Even GPU makers got dragged into the fray temporarily. Nvidia confused investors when it said it released patches for the CPU flaws, even though its GPUs are not vulnerable. Nvidia later clarified that the patches were simply precautionary measures, and its chips are not affected by the flaws.

AMD's stock rose more than 20% in the past month as investors jumped on the company when the CPU flaws seemed to only affect Intel chips. Intel shares are flat for the month, and down 2.06% over the last week.

There is still a lot to be learned about the CPU flaws and how they will affect modern computing. Because the root of the security issues stem from a crucial part of how modern computers run, it will likely take a long time to know how it will affect the tech world in the long-run.

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