Inside every modern CPU since the Intel Pentium fdiv bug, assembly instructions aren’t a one-to-one mapping to what the CPU actually does. Inside the CPU, there is a decoder that turns assemb… ...

When homebrewing a CPU, one has to deal with microcode. Microcode is the low-level nuts and bolts of how, precisely, a CPU executes instructions (like opcodes) and performs functions such as updati… ...

Up to this point, Intel’s guidance has been a list of dense BIOS settings that could reduce performance by upwards of 9% on CPUs like the Core i9-13900K and Core i9-14900K. The microcode update ...

If this is anything like that, Intel should say so, and soon. We won't have firmware updates available from motherboard manufacturers for a bit yet, but the new microcode is already available to ...

Now, Intel's releasing a proper root cause fix for affected 13th and 14th Gen CPUs in its 0x12B microcode update. This update "addresses elevated voltage requests by the processor during idle and ...

Intel has already released the 0x113 microcode for Arrow Lake, but that update was mostly focused on improving memory compatibility. If folks on the ASUS ROG forums are right, ...

Microcode is like duct tape, used to patch hardware bugs. Commenters on YCombinator reckon there’s nowhere near enough space or flexibility in Zen 2/3/4 microcode to gut the x86 front-end entirely.

The Intel Core Ultra 200S CPUs initially suffered from a weakness in single-threaded applications. A microcode update now solves the performance problem.

The private key used to authenticate microcode does not reside in the silicon, and an attacker cannot load an unauthenticated patch on a remote system. Impossible until now.

Intel and its partners have begun rolling out the microcode update that will fix stability and degradation issues with 13th and 14th Gen Intel Core desktop CPUs. The update arrived slightly ahead ...

So microcode is now loaded into the processor at startup as an unencrypted and signed binary blob. If you're smart enough to break that and reverse engineer the microcode, you're in business.

Intel is releasing a microcode update to motherboard partners for new BIOS releases on 13th and 14th-gen supporting boards. These updates are strongly recommended for everyone with a Raptor Lake ...