On Sunday, 7 January 2018 20:46:52 GMT taii...@gmx.com wrote: > I have several sandy/ivybridge CPU's and I was wondering if anyone knows > as to if intel is releasing microcode updates for them. > > It sure would be funny if intel wanted you to buy a new CPU to fix a > problem that was their fault to begin with.
As I found explained elsewhere, what can be done with microcode updates is actually very limited. It was claimed that most often Intel would use updates to disable features, permanently, and could not do much more with microcode. This agrees with my understanding of electronics, though I originally did think that slightly more was possible. Perhaps they could disable some cache functionality or speculative execution, but you would still be left with the performance penalties of most of the code-based fixes. In any case, using my original expectations, I would not expect them to be able to modify the behavior of the execution units in such a fundamental way. If great changes are possible with microcode then Intel's processors are actually closer to FPGAs, which I do not think is likely, as FPGAs are very power and space inefficient. On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 6:00 PM, Peter Humphrey <pe...@prh.myzen.co.uk> wrote: > Welcome to unbridled capitalism, USA-style. > I have a mobile device that I noticed had a severe reduction in battery life mid-November, about the time the patches were rolled out by Microsoft. I may have to look at legal action in this regard, as now the device is unusable. I assumed it was compromised anyway and would prefer the performance back. Cheers, R0b0t1