A performance boost of up to 20% could be seen by Ubuntu users running on Intel-based systems, after a decision to switch off some security features designed to protect against Spectre-based attacks.
Spectre, which was revealed in 2018, uses speculative execution features in modern chips to extract confidential data via side-channel attacks.
Although chipmakers worked to develop mitigations that restricted certain features, these had the effect of degrading overall performance.
The decision to drop some of these protection was reached after consultation between Ubuntu and Intel developers, who agreed that no GPU-related data is processed at this level, so Spectre is not a major risk.
The change will take effect in the Questing Quokka release due in October.
