The microcode is not burned into the chip because running it from RAM allows us to have a shorter design cycle -- it lets us avoid having to re-fab the chips if we need to change microcode before launch.
There are a few different kinds of code that all get lumped together as "firmware". Some is horizontal microcode driving hardware state machines, some is really a big chunk of the driver that runs on a general purpose CPU on chip, and there are a few examples in between. Our microcode is closer to the hardware state machine end of the spectrum (where it's really part of the hardware design) but it all gets lumped into the "non-free" repository together.
There are a few different kinds of code that all get lumped together as "firmware". Some is horizontal microcode driving hardware state machines, some is really a big chunk of the driver that runs on a general purpose CPU on chip, and there are a few examples in between. Our microcode is closer to the hardware state machine end of the spectrum (where it's really part of the hardware design) but it all gets lumped into the "non-free" repository together.
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