HN Explorer

9 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 32.2 ms ] thread
CyberDildonics
I would rather just ask the NSA what information they would like from me and send it to them directly.
a0-prw
But if they told you what information they wanted from you, they'd have to kill you ;)
mykull
We already know this. They have a mandate for total information awareness. Collect everything. They just claim they haven't collected the data until someone views it in their database for a specific purpose, but that's misusing the word "collection" so they can pretend they aren't shitting all over the 4th amendment.
tyingq
Is this Spectre/Meltdown related? The last microcode release for that wasn't good.
swills
Yes, this should have the fixed fix.
gargravarr
Does amaze me that Intel list this as supporting all the way back to the original Pentium 75MHz. That's over twenty years old. This kind of support for a consumer tech product? Incredible.
ashleyn
OG Pentiums are still used in embedded systems and space applications
bratch
The package contains microcode for old CPUs but it isn't necessarily still updated or recent.

Here for example is what's available for my router's CPU, from the latest package:

  # grep model\ name /proc/cpuinfo
  model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E4500  @ 2.20GHz

  # iucode_tool -S -l /lib/firmware/intel-ucode/* | tail -n1
  iucode_tool: system has processor(s) with signature 0x000006fd
    030/003: sig 0x000006fd, pf_mask 0x01, 2010-10-02, rev 0x00a4, size 4096
Last updated almost eight years ago, so doesn't contain any Spectre/Meltdown fixes.