The Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities has to be one of the biggest security flaws in recent times, especially given that it affects pretty much all kinds of devices such as desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. We’ve seen companies start issuing patches to close the vulnerabilities, and NVIDIA is doing the same as well.The company is working on bringing a patch to fix the Spectre vulnerability for its SHIELD Tablet. The device in question was launched back in 2014, so it’s actually rather reassuring to see NVIDIA still supporting the tablet despite it being almost four years old. This is compared to other Android OEMs who sometimes abandon devices after 1-2 years.
According to the company, “NVIDIA believes SHIELD Tablet GPU hardware is immune to the reported security issue. SHIELD Tablet integrates an Arm (CPU) processor that may, in certain circumstances, benefit from software mitigations to reduce the risk of the exploits identified in the Google Project Zero disclosure.”
Basically it seems like NVIDIA is confident that its GPUs should be fine, and that the patch is more to deal with the CPU’s vulnerability. The update is expected to be released soon and will be part of NVIDIA’s SHIELD Experience Upgrade 5.4, so those who are still using the tablet will want to keep an eye out for it.