Intel Releases New Microcode For Skylake CPUs (20200616)

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Releases New Microcode For Skylake CPUs (20200616)

While Intel updated the CPU microcode for Skylake and other affected generations last week as part of the SRBDS / CrossTalk vulnerability that was made public last week Tuesday, today Intel quietly released another microcode revision but this time just for Skylake...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-microcode-20200616

[milkylainen]

Seems that "Patch-Tuesday" is a contagious disease after all...

[aphysically]

A lot of distributions were having to nuke one of the last microcode updates because it was making certain systems unbootable. Could the update be related?

https://github.com/intel/Intel-Linux-Processor-Microcode-Data-Files/issues/31

[scratchi]

A lot of distributions were having to nuke one of the last microcode updates because it was making certain systems unbootable. Could the update be related?

https://github.com/intel/Intel-Linux...iles/issues/31

Yea, like this bug report from CentOS that got posted in yesterday's CentOS 8.2 release article: https://bugs.centos.org//view.php?id=17452

I assume this might be impacting RHEL too in this case.

[mroche]

I assume this might be impacting RHEL too in this case.

No need to assume, it is:

- 6.10 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1846134
- 7.9 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1846133
- 8.3 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1846119

Turns out I was mistaken in my prior posting, our Skylake (Xeon Gold 6148) servers were running off of the base 2.1-61microcode (C7.8), and not the problematic 2.1-61.6. Going to hold off until this 'update' gets pushed downstream to us.

Cheers,
Mike

[starshipeleven]

A lot of distributions were having to nuke one of the last microcode updates because it was making certain systems unbootable.

Going for the maximum security option.

[angrypie]

Seems that "Patch-Tuesday" is a contagious disease after all...

More like "Patch Tuesday, Unbootable Wednesday."

[zerothruster]

The problem with unbootable systems seems to have been confined to the -4e- versions, at least from looking at the issue on Monday. My own -5e- i3 was booting with the 20200609 microcode and with linux-5.7.2 it reported it had Microcode mitigation for SRBDS. So, if I "update" to the latest release (which reverts all the skylake updates to what was available at the back end of last year) I'll lose that.

Of course, for my use-case SRBDS doesn't seem to be a major threat, but this is still disappointing.

[archkde]

Judging by the revision number, this "update" actually reverts the microcode for the affected models to the older version that does not hang the processor as soon as trying to apply it.

[zerothruster]

Judging by the revision number, this "update" actually reverts the microcode for the affected models to the older version that does not hang the processor as soon as trying to apply it.

Yes, except that not all machines hung while booting. Mine is one, but now there is a report of a hang on a high-end (Xeon) 5e machine. So I'll keep using the 20200609 firmware.