Intel Releases Updated Celeron & Pentium Silver CPU Microcode

It's not too common for Intel to publish new CPU microcode updates outside of their "Patch Tuesday" regiment but that happened yesterday with a Friday night release of new CPU microcode although this time is limited to the Celeron and Pentium Silver families.

It was just a few weeks back that Intel releases a bunch of new CPU microcode for fixing three new security issues. The Friday microcode drop for Celeron and Pentium Silver processors doesn't appear to be due to any new security matters but fixing functional issues for those processors.

The Inel Microcode 20240531 release simply notes "update for functional issues" and points to the Pentium Silver and Celeron processor specification update. The cited document though hasn't seen any updates since October 2020. It's not clear to which errata should now be fixed by this new microcode revision but some of the most recent errata on that document include PT TMA packets having incorrect payloads, system hang under complex conditions, and unpredictable system behavior.

In any event for those Linux users running Pentium Silver N/J5xxx or Celeron N/J4xxx processors can find the new Intel CPU microcode available from GitHub.