Updated AMD Zen CPU Microcode Posted

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Updated AMD Zen CPU Microcode Posted

AMD has just dropped a new Family 17h "Zen" microcode file for Linux users...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Zen-November-Microcode

[dungeon]

That is very exciting news, we don't even know what is this about

Does this MCExtractor works for linux microcodes? At least to show a bit more info about

https://github.com/platomav/MCExtractor

v1.16.2 r65

Added Drunk AMD employee 3, wrong MC date

v1.4.1

Added Drunk AMD Employee #2, fixed Ryzen year typo

Ha, ha OK, VIA is also drunk sometimes

v1.8.0 r40

Added Drunk VIA employee 1, wrong MC Signature

Added Drunk VIA employee 2, wrong MC Checksum

[milkylainen]

Microcode updates without a proper changelog?
You'd think with all the CPU side-channel shitstorms that has been raging that at least some microcode update transparency was in order?

[Jabberwocky]

Would be great if it's Zen2 or if they decided to fix erratum 1109 as a Christmas gift...

[shmerl]

Does it require new UEFI or it can be loaded without changing the above?

[mumar1]

I just cannt wait for the Epyc Rome 64 core benchmarks

[chithanh]

Could be for spectre. AMD was behind in releasing microcode update files, even after some UEFI/BIOS shipped it already.

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1062370934227521536

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1062383945692569601

[flubba86]

AMD was behind in releasing microcode update files, even after some UEFI/BIOS shipped it already.

Yeah, that was my thought too. If AMD is releasing Microcode updates, chances are there are already some BIOS updates shipping with it included.

The release notes of those BIOS updates might shed some more light on what has changed.

[Grim85]

Hopefully it fixes the random freezes when changing C-State, so that we can set the power supply settings back to low

[starshipeleven]

Does it require new UEFI or it can be loaded without changing the above?

microcode is updated in the CPU by Linux during boot if the UEFI's loaded version is older. This update is not permanent though, and will happen again every time you reboot.