AMD Releases Updated CPU Microcode For Zen 3 CPUs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Releases Updated CPU Microcode For Zen 3 CPUs

AMD today pushed updated Family 19h / Zen 3 CPU microcode to the linux-firmware.git tree...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Feb-2022-19h-ucode

[bosjc]

Isn't this generally included in bios updates, too?

[Etherman]

Isn't this generally included in bios updates, too?

Yes CPU microcode updates are commonly distributed bu BIOS updates. But to get them via BIOS you need a flash and reboot.

[brad0]

Isn't this generally included in bios updates, too?

For microcode updates depending on the motherboard OEM and how old it is there isn't always up to date BIOSes provided.

[Developer12]

Now if they could only do this for the're previous generations too. Not just zen (17h) but also 16h and 15h. I'm getting real fucking sick of having to manually patch microcode archives with dd.

[bosjc]

For microcode updates depending on the motherboard OEM and how old it is there isn't always up to date BIOSes provided.

Sure, just saying - if one's bios is up to date, most likely they have had what ever changes in this for a bit now. Thus, as Michael pointed out, probably no major performance/etc changes (as they would have already been noticed in the wild via bios). At least with bios, though,there is a bit of a changelog even if its almost always useless.

[shmerl]

What version does this update show in dmesg?

Despite adding it, I still see this as it was before updating it:

microcode: CPU20: patch_level=0x0a201016

I'm on Debian testing and have amd64-microcode installed (but added new ucode files / replaced old one with this update and ran update-initramfs -u.

[DanL]

Sure, just saying - if one's bios is up to date, most likely they have had what ever changes in this for a bit now.

Absolutely not. Motherboard vendors are notoriously bad at putting out timely BIOS updates, especially with mobos that weren't the latest and greatest or pricier models. Also, in corporate/server environments, things like BIOS updates tend to get overlooked.

[halo9en]

The latest BIOS update isn't too good anyway

[birdie]

I'm two wits about it:

On the one hand I love updates and I always install and run the latest however recently I've come to the conclusion that sometimes it's best not to touch something which just works and you never think about it and BIOS is a prime example of that specially in this date and age when many motherboard vendors prevent downgrades.