Downfall, or as Intel prefers to call it is GDS: Gather Data Sampling. GDS/Downfall affects the gather instruction with AVX2 and AVX-512 enabled processors. At least the latest-generation Intel CPUs are not affected but Tigerlake / Ice Lake back to Sandy Bridge is confirmed to be impacted. There is microcode mitigation available but it will be costly for AVX2/AVX-512 workloads with GATHER instructions in hot code-paths and thus widespread software exposure particularly for HPC and other compute-intensive workloads that have relied on AVX2/AVX-512 for better performance.
I think this is missing an article link: https://www.phoronix.com/review/downfall
Rough day for CPU makers…
Update: Of course there is a dedicated page for it: https://downfall.page/
Yep sorry, I made the post while I was in a hurry. Thank you for the link!