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A microcode program that is executed by the processor during the microcode update process. [1] This microcode is able to reconfigure and enable or disable components using a special register, and it must update the breakpoint match registers. [1] Up to sixty patched micro-operations to be populated into the SRAM. [1] Padding consisting of ...
Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX), also called Transactional Synchronization Extensions New Instructions (TSX-NI), is an extension to the x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) that adds hardware transactional memory support, speeding up execution of multi-threaded software through lock elision.
Intel promised microcode updates to resolve the vulnerability. [1] The microcode patches have been shown to significantly reduce the performance of some heavily-vectorized loads. [7] Patches to mitigate the effects of the vulnerability have also been created as part of the forthcoming version 6.5 release of the Linux kernel. [8]
Whereas a custom logic system might have a series of diodes and gates that output a series of voltages on various control lines, the microcode engine is connected to these lines instead, and these are turned on and off as the engine reads the microcode instructions in sequence. The microcode instructions are often bit encoded to those lines ...
In response to the research, Intel released microcode updates to mitigate the issue. The updated microcode ensures that off-core accesses are delayed until sensitive operations – specifically the RDRAND , RDSEED , and EGETKEY instructions – are completed and the staging buffer has been overwritten. [ 21 ]
A microcode update fixing a bug with the eTVB algorithm was published the previous month, but this was confirmed by Intel to not be the root cause of the problem, although it may have been a contributing factor. [43] Intel confirmed that there is no fix to the issue if it already affects a CPU, and any damage to the CPU is permanent.
The XSAVE instruction set extensions are designed to save/restore CPU extended state (typically for the purpose of context switching) in a manner that can be extended to cover new instruction set extensions without the OS context-switching code needing to understand the specifics of the new extensions.
Taking a contrasting view was Linus Torvalds, calling the TLB issue "totally insignificant", adding, "The biggest problem is that Intel should just have documented the TLB behavior better." [24] Microsoft has issued update KB936357 to address the errata by microcode update, [25] with no performance penalty. BIOS updates are also available to ...