Broadwell M with M.2 SSD Tablet unusable after Meltdown / Spectre Microcode Update

[HEnur]

My Tablet Dell Venue 11 Pro 7140 features the Broadwell Core M 5Y10a and Dell released a new firmware (A14) on January, 9th, 2018, containing the microcode to mitigate the Spectre / Meltdown CVE. Since updating to this new bios, the whole system is unresponsive and sluggish. Even the lightest tasks like starting a browser take a lot of time to accomplish. The operating system is Windows 10 Pro and the Windows Patch to mitigate Spectre / Meltdown is installed. The Microsoft patch alone (without updating the firmware) did not affect the performance in a discernible way, the sluggishness occurs only after the Bios update. Since the tablet is equipped with an M.2 SSD, the IOPS (especially random read / write like 4K / 32 Bit) drop significantly after the bios update.

The user "klumsch" opened a similar thread, but sadly Intel decided to keep their answer to him a secret by closing the discussion and sending him a private message. Since this is not very helpful, I decided to open this new thread.

Any solution to this problem? Will there be an optimized microcode update that does not reduce the M.2 SSDs random IOPS so severely? Anyone having the same problem with a similar system?

For now, I decided to fallback to the previous Bios (A13) without the microcode update.

Thank you

Castor

[idata]

Hello Castor73,

I understand that you are having performance issues after updating the BIOS of your system.We appreciate that you are taking time to contact Intel about your concerns. We understand that the security and performance of your devices are important to you. Performance impacts are workload-dependent, and, for the average computer user, should not be significant.This means that the typical home and business PC user should not see significant slowdowns in common tasks such as reading email, writing a document, or accessing digital photos. For Intel's latest performance testing results, see https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/intel-security-issue-update-initial-performance-data-results-client-systems/ https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/intel-security-issue-update-initial-performance-data-results-client-systems/Since the problem began after the BIOS update it is highly recommendable to get in contact with Dell and mention the performance aspect.I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.Regards,David V