Does the Specter patch in iOS 11.2.2 slow down devices by 50%?
Materials with similar high-profile headlines have been widely replicated by numerous technoblogs, using the “iPhone performance benchmarks after Specter security update” article as a source for authorship of the little-known blogger Melv1n (Melvin Mughal). The bottom line is simple: Apple rolled out a patch designed to close Specter's iOS vulnerability; after its installation, the benchmark showed a significant performance degradation of the iPhone 6. Link to the post was posted on one of the major resources, Melvin’s small standalone blog collapsed under the “habraeffect”, and the Internet audience began to discuss another scarecrow and stigmatize Apple. But what about the patch and performance?
To test Melvin’s assertion, it’s enough to conduct a simple experiment using the method described in the post: take measurements in the Geekbench 4 benchmark before installing the update and after it on the device without jailbreak, closing all running applications.
The iPhone 7 Plus shows an unambiguous (albeit small) increase in performance (or, more precisely, a score in the benchmark) immediately after an iOS update from 11.2 to 11.2.2: “parrots” before the update , after the update , a direct comparison (my results).
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Similar reports from users of the iPhone 6s / 7/8 (Plus), X and even 5s are regularly found in the comments to similar articles: Geekbench scores have slightly increased . But perhaps the problem only affected the Apple A8 SoC used in the iPhone 6?
I do not have a sixth iPhone, but there is an iPad Air 2 - it uses a three-core version of the A8, A8x. Unfortunately, I forgot to measure it in parrots before the upgrade, so we will focus on the average values from the Geekbench website : 1796 points in the test on one core and 4161 points in multi-core mode. Running the benchmark immediately after installing iOS 11.2.2 showed sad results:
Is Melvin right? The result in single-core is acceptable, but what happened to a good thousand points in multi-core?
I was embarrassed that after the update, the ipad was warm (not hot, but not completely cold). I repeated the measurement the next day and got completely normal results (slightly above average):
Obviously, some background processes were launched on the device after the update, most likely storage optimization, indexing, etc., due to which the performance temporarily decreased. I came across a similar thing both on apple machines and on Android smartphones, which could even get very warm in the first hours after an update done without a wipe (full cleaning) of user files.
It is unknown whether it is a coincidence that the iPhone 7 Plus on the SoC A10 showed normal (and even higher) scores already minutes after the patch was installed, and the iPad Air 2 (and, obviously, iPhone 6 by Melvin Mughal) on A8 (x) launched what optimization processes that have temporarily reduced performance. I'm pretty sure that this feature is not related to the protection from Specter, most likely, just “putting things in order” in the system.
Bottom line: both tested devices did not demonstrate any significant and (or) persistent performance degradation after installing iOS 11.2.2. Unfortunately, large portals with millions of visits, with many devices for tests and reviews, do not bother to do the simplest material checks, if there is a chance to collect more traffic on the resonant topic. Update boldly - at least, if you are already on iOS 11 and do not use jailbreak.
To test Melvin’s assertion, it’s enough to conduct a simple experiment using the method described in the post: take measurements in the Geekbench 4 benchmark before installing the update and after it on the device without jailbreak, closing all running applications.
The iPhone 7 Plus shows an unambiguous (albeit small) increase in performance (or, more precisely, a score in the benchmark) immediately after an iOS update from 11.2 to 11.2.2: “parrots” before the update , after the update , a direct comparison (my results).
')
Similar reports from users of the iPhone 6s / 7/8 (Plus), X and even 5s are regularly found in the comments to similar articles: Geekbench scores have slightly increased . But perhaps the problem only affected the Apple A8 SoC used in the iPhone 6?
I do not have a sixth iPhone, but there is an iPad Air 2 - it uses a three-core version of the A8, A8x. Unfortunately, I forgot to measure it in parrots before the upgrade, so we will focus on the average values from the Geekbench website : 1796 points in the test on one core and 4161 points in multi-core mode. Running the benchmark immediately after installing iOS 11.2.2 showed sad results:
Is Melvin right? The result in single-core is acceptable, but what happened to a good thousand points in multi-core?
I was embarrassed that after the update, the ipad was warm (not hot, but not completely cold). I repeated the measurement the next day and got completely normal results (slightly above average):
Obviously, some background processes were launched on the device after the update, most likely storage optimization, indexing, etc., due to which the performance temporarily decreased. I came across a similar thing both on apple machines and on Android smartphones, which could even get very warm in the first hours after an update done without a wipe (full cleaning) of user files.
It is unknown whether it is a coincidence that the iPhone 7 Plus on the SoC A10 showed normal (and even higher) scores already minutes after the patch was installed, and the iPad Air 2 (and, obviously, iPhone 6 by Melvin Mughal) on A8 (x) launched what optimization processes that have temporarily reduced performance. I'm pretty sure that this feature is not related to the protection from Specter, most likely, just “putting things in order” in the system.
Bottom line: both tested devices did not demonstrate any significant and (or) persistent performance degradation after installing iOS 11.2.2. Unfortunately, large portals with millions of visits, with many devices for tests and reviews, do not bother to do the simplest material checks, if there is a chance to collect more traffic on the resonant topic. Update boldly - at least, if you are already on iOS 11 and do not use jailbreak.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/356302/
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