The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities are unspecific to any one vendor and take advantage of techniques commonly used in most modern processor architectures. This means a large range of products are affected. Mitigations could include updates to both OSs and firmware (BIOS).
NI recommends customers follow security best practices to protect against exploitation of vulnerabilities. These practices include adopting software updates, avoiding unrecognized hyperlinks and websites, not downloading files or applications from unknown sources, and following secure password policies.
NI has observed some negative system performance impact from applying the mitigations. Generally, performance degradation is in line with reports from the industry. In some cases, the impact could be significant but is specific to the application. The “Switch | Registry Settings” section of this Windows Support article describes how to enable or disable the Meltdown/Spectre mitigations. Note: If you disable the mitigations and then apply a Windows update from Microsoft, you may need to restart your computer twice to ensure that the mitigations remain disabled.
The “Verifying that protections are enabled” section of this Windows Support article can help identify whether the mitigations have been applied successfully.
Depending on the controller you are using, you may need to perform one or both of the following steps:
Note: BIOS updates are unavailable for some older controllers, for which NI's component suppliers are not providing updates. For example, refer to Intel’s Microcode Revision Guidance.
PXI/PXI Express Controller List
Controllers | Mitigation Variant 2, 3a, & 4, and Foreshadow (As of 3/12/2019) |
PXI-8102 | No update available |
PXI-8108 | No update available |
PXI-8109 | 1.2.4f2 |
PXI-8110 | No update available |
PXI-8115 | 1.0.2f0 |
PXI-8119 | 1.9.1f0 |
PXI-8820 | 1.0.1f0 |
PXI-8840 Dual Core | 2.0.3f0 |
PXI-8840 Quad Core | 2.0.1f1 |
PXIe-8102 | No update available |
PXIe-8108 | No update available |
PXIe-8115 | 1.0.2f0 |
PXIe-8130 | No update available |
PXIe-8133 | No update available |
PXIe-8135 | 1.2.5f1 |
PXIe-8820 | 1.2.1f0 |
PXIe-8821 | 2.1.2f0 |
PXIe-8840 Dual Core | 2.1.2f0 |
PXIe-8840 Quad Core | 2.1.2f0 |
PXIe-8861 | Ships with BIOS mitigations enabled |
PXIe-8880 | 2.1.1f0 |
CompactDAQ/CompactRIO/Vision/OEM Controller List
Controllers | Mitigation Variant 2, 3a, & 4, and Foreshadow (As of 3/12/2019) |
cDAQ-9132 | 1.3.1f0 |
cDAQ-9133 | 1.3.1f0 |
cDAQ-9134 | 1.3.1f0 |
cDAQ-9135 | 1.3.1f0 |
cDAQ-9136 | 1.3.1f0 |
cDAQ-9137 | 1.3.1f0 |
cDAQ-9138 | 1.2.4f2 |
cDAQ-9139 | 1.2.4f2 |
cRIO-9081 | 1.2.4f2 |
cRIO-9082 | 1.2.4f2 |
CVS-1458 | 1.3.0f0 |
CVS-1459 | 1.3.0f0 |
IC-3120 | 1.3.1f100 |
IC-3121 | 1.3.1f100 |
IC-3171 | 1.1.2f0 |
IC-3172 | 1.1.2f0 |
IC-3173 | 1.1.2f0 |
RMC-8354 | No update available |
RMC-8355 | No update available |
RMC-8356 | No update available |
RMC-8357 | No update available |
TPC-2230 | No update available |