funsec mailing list archives
Re: Description of the Intel CPU bugs
From: Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu
Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:41:45 -0400
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 11:37:39 PDT, Matthew Murphy said:
So the one Microsoft update has all of the microcode for all of the Intel CPUs in it?It likely has all the microcode *updates*, which may not necessarily contain full dupes of the microcode. It most likely will only install the update relevant for your particular CPU.
That's basically what Intel releases - patches for each CPU's microcode. Those of you who are old enough to remember HMASPZAP know the drill, including the ever-popular 'PTCHAREA DS 12F' or whatever was deemed needed. Yes, Intel leaves patch space open in the microcode store. :) About 294K of data, currently 125 chunks. Each chunk is basically: family, model, stepping, checksum, length, <random-looking bytes>. There's provisions for stripping it down, so if Dell *knows* that a particular laptop may have one of 6 CPUs, and never one of the other 119, it can include only those 6 CPUs in the BIOS. The Microsoft update would of course need to carry all 294K along.
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Current thread:
- Description of the Intel CPU bugs Richard M. Smith (Jun 28)
- RE: Description of the Intel CPU bugs Larry Seltzer (Jun 28)
- RE: Description of the Intel CPU bugs Larry Seltzer (Jun 28)
- Re: Description of the Intel CPU bugs Valdis . Kletnieks (Jun 28)
- RE: Description of the Intel CPU bugs Larry Seltzer (Jun 28)
- Re: Description of the Intel CPU bugs Matthew Murphy (Jun 28)
- Is this a hoax? Blanchard_Michael (Jun 28)
- Re: Is this a hoax? B.K. DeLong (Jun 28)
- Re: Is this a hoax? Valdis . Kletnieks (Jun 28)
- RE: Is this a hoax? Blanchard_Michael (Jun 28)
- Re: Description of the Intel CPU bugs Valdis . Kletnieks (Jun 28)
- RE: Description of the Intel CPU bugs Larry Seltzer (Jun 28)
- Re: Description of the Intel CPU bugs Rob, grandpa of Ryan, Trevor, Devon & Hannah (Jun 30)
- Re: Description of the Intel CPU bugs Gadi Evron (Jun 28)
- Re: Description of the Intel CPU bugs Dude VanWinkle (Jun 28)
- Re: Description of the Intel CPU bugs Valdis . Kletnieks (Jun 28)