Contributed by Paul 'WEiRD' de Weerd on from the not-very-firm-ware dept.
Patrick Wildt (patrick@) recently committed some code that will update the Intel microcode on many Intel CPUs, a diff initially written by Stefan Fritsch (sf@). The microcode of your CPU is basically the firmware that runs on your (Intel) processor, defining its instruction set in terms of so called "microinstructions". The new code depends, of course, on the corresponding firmware package, ported by Patrick which can be installed using a very recent fw_update(1). Of course, this all plays into the recently revealed problems in Intel (and other) CPUs, Meltdown and Spectre.
Now Theo has explained the workings of the code on openbsd-tech, detailing some of the challenges in updating microcode on CPUs where your OS is already starting to run.
Theo hints at future updates to the intel-firmware package in his mail:
Also, Intel is saying their new microcodes sucks and people should wait a little.
Several developers are working on mitigations for these issues, attacking the problem from several angles. Expect to see more updates to a CVS tree near you soon.
(Comments are closed)
By Marc Espie (espie) espie@nerim.net on
Six months is quite a long period to sit on your hands. No wonder Intel came out all thumbs.
By Paul 'WEiRD' de Weerd (weerd) weerd@weirdnet.nl on https://undeadly.org
By rueda (rueda) on http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/donations.html
The microcode port has been updated to an earlier release because of issues (with the later release) on a ports build machine.