The real thing is: can you update the microcode of older CPUs? If not then it’s a marketing strategy.
@GolfNovemberUniform @captainkangaroo Yes and Linux includes software to do this.
Microcode would not be a concern with that particular CPU.
How about a Linux Patch that reports binary blobs wirh no source AS __ Security Vulnerabilities __
Or are we not allowed to criticize the back doors that hackers gain access to.
How does it know if the microcode is outdated?
@ryannathans @captainkangaroo I’m going to make the wild assumption that the kernel will have a table of the current microcode versions at the time of it’s release, but I doubt that
will get updated except by kernel upgrades.
Debian-based distros (and probably most othera as well) actually have a package called “intel-microcode” which gets updated fairly regularly.
@DaPorkchop_ Oddly, if you build your own kernel and remove the system provided one, the package gets automatically removed as well which is weird, because it is really still needed regardless.
@ryannathans Why bloat the kernel with the microcode for every intel processor that might need it (and there is a similar thing for AMD) when you don’t have that specific processor? It does make more sense for it to be a separate, especially on memory constrained systems. I mean if you’ve got 256GB of RAM probably not a big deal but if you’ve got 256MB a big deal.
The Linux kernel would maintain a list of the latest Intel microcode versions for each CPU family, which is based on the data from the Intel microcode GitHub repository. In turn this list would need to be kept updated with new Linux kernel releases and as Intel pushes out new CPU microcode files.
Sounds like that would be outdated for everyone without a rolling distro.
