On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 10:10 AM, BRM <bm_witn...@yahoo.com> wrote: > ----- Original Message ---- > >> I have two questions: >> >> 1) Do I have to enable microcode updates in the BIOS of my Crosshair >> IV Formula to activate microcodes push in the CPU by the module >> "microcode" ? (AMD Phenom X6 1090T) > > Not sure about BIOS, but the Linux Kernel you are running will certainly need > support enabled too. > >> 2) Does anyone know, what these microcodes do? They are fixes for... >> ...what? > > The Intel and AMD processors are more abstract than physical now. With i486 > and > earlier the processors were typically hard wired; hardware "bug" fixes could > not > be pushed out. > Intel's Pentium (and I don't know which AMD) started using micro-code to > program > the processor. This enabled them to push out "hardware" bug fixes for the > processors. > > So what happens is the x86 instruction (e.g. mov ax, bx) gets translated to > micro-code first, then it gets processed, and the result translated back to > the > expected instruction result - essentially, emulating the x86 instruction set > in > the processor. That's the simple version. > > So now when they discover a bug in the hardware they can push out a micro-code > update to either fix the "hardware" (microcode) bug or work around a hardware > (physical hardware) bug. > > Ben
Ben, Do you know how security on these updates is handled? Seems to me this is an area rife for exploitation so I've been very hesitant to use them until I understood more. Cheers, Mark
