From: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com>
To: "Justin Piszcz" <jpiszcz@hotmail.com>
Cc: <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: RE: Linux Kernel Microcode Question
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 09:13:37 -0800
Message-ID: <MDEHLPKNGKAHNMBLJOLKMENKLCAA.davids@webmaster.com>
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>  > Is it worth it?

> In most cases, yes.  It's zero cost. You don't waste RAM, as the
> microcode gets loaded into small RAM areas on the CPU that are
> otherwise unused.

	It is at least theoeretically possible that a microcode update might cause
an operation that's normally done very quickly (in dedicated hardware) to be
done by a slower path (microcode operations) to fix a bug in the dedicated
hardware that is very obscure and very unlikely to ever bother you. However,
I have never heard of even a single confirmed instance where this happened.

	DS


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