Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: BRM <bm_witness@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Microcode update AMD
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:12:27
Message-Id: 324412.67436.qm@web39307.mail.mud.yahoo.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] Microcode update AMD by meino.cramer@gmx.de
1 ----- Original Message ----
2
3 > I have two questions:
4 >
5 > 1) Do I have to enable microcode updates in the BIOS of my Crosshair
6 > IV Formula to activate microcodes push in the CPU by the module
7 > "microcode" ? (AMD Phenom X6 1090T)
8
9 Not sure about BIOS, but the Linux Kernel you are running will certainly need
10 support enabled too.
11
12 > 2) Does anyone know, what these microcodes do? They are fixes for...
13 > ...what?
14
15 The Intel and AMD processors are more abstract than physical now. With i486 and
16 earlier the processors were typically hard wired; hardware "bug" fixes could not
17 be pushed out.
18 Intel's Pentium (and I don't know which AMD) started using micro-code to program
19 the processor. This enabled them to push out "hardware" bug fixes for the
20 processors.
21
22 So what happens is the x86 instruction (e.g. mov ax, bx) gets translated to
23 micro-code first, then it gets processed, and the result translated back to the
24 expected instruction result - essentially, emulating the x86 instruction set in
25 the processor. That's the simple version.
26
27 So now when they discover a bug in the hardware they can push out a micro-code
28 update to either fix the "hardware" (microcode) bug or work around a hardware
29 (physical hardware) bug.
30
31 Ben

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] Microcode update AMD meino.cramer@×××.de
Re: [gentoo-user] Microcode update AMD Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com>