Since the second version of Spectre needs a different fix, AMD will provide its customers and partners for Ryzen and EPYC processors with a patch for its chips starting this week. Firmware updates for its older chips will follow in the coming weeks. If you use Linux, you might get it sooner than you think, since Linux vendors have already started releasing OS patches for the second variant. You might have to wait a bit if you're a Windows user, though, since AMD is still working out distribution timing with Microsoft.

Despite deciding to release a patch for version 2, the company reiterated that its chips' architecture will make it very difficult for attackers to use the exploit. It also maintained that Meltdown isn't applicable to AMD chips at all. AMD's processors aren't "susceptible" to Meltdown, the chipmaker wrote, "due to [the company's] use of privilege level protections within paging architecture." Since "no mitigation is required" for variant 3, it won't be creating a patch for the vulnerability.

Update: AMD clarified that it never said its chips were not susceptible to variant 2.