Am 08.07.2014 20:57, schrieb ron minnich:
Might work on your x60. Not recommended on more recent chipsets. Yes, you might get it to boot. That's almost worse than having it fail.
For a not-so-recent example, some of the later Via processors require a microcode update lest they hang when you change the processor clock.
Similar non-obvious issues can happen with caches (I think Intel alluded to potential issues in that general area every now and then, maybe even on the Core/Core2 things you find in the X60 - I hope they're just being cautious here), and these issues might not be as prominent - you really are lucky if your system hangs hard instead of probabilistically flipping every 200000th bit it processes.
Since we really rely on caches when we enable _Cache_-as-RAM, having them fully functional is a good thing. Since Microcode usually comes without a (useful) change log (bad, bad CPU-vendors!), we have to be cautious here.
Like many computing products, CPUs these days are banana-ware: shipped still "green", they mature at the customer's.
If possible, apply the newest update you can find as soon as possible. Since people are so bad with updating their firmware, Linux can do a second run if necessary.
Patrick
Thanks for the good examples, Patrick.
So I'll say it one more time: while I understand the concerns about the microcode blob, and I appreciate the sincerity of those who want to build coreboot images that don't have them, I think it's a huge mistake to take that path on almost anything made in the last decade.
ron
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Patrick Georgi -
ron minnich