RE: [RFC] Microcode Update Driver for AMD K8 CPUs

[richard.brunner@amd.com]

 

>Danny van Dyk <kugelfang@gentoo.org> writes:
>
>> I recently found some piece of code [1] to perform a microcode update
>> on AMD's K8 CPUs. It included some update blocks hardcoded into the
>> module.

>Several people found this code (including me). But I don't think
>it's a good idea right now to merge because it is better to leave
>these things to the BIOS. It's unlikely that AMD will regularly
>release "open" microcode updates anyways, and moving them
>between BIOSes seems a bit dangerous to me (often you likely
>need to change some magic MSRs too or you could have some 
>side effects). Overall it seems to be too dangerous to 
>do in a standard kernel. 
>
>Also I suspect the driver won't work very well on SMP. 
>
>-Andi

As usual, Andi is absolutely correct.

	-Rich Brunner, AMD Fellow