Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760198AbYGCN5x (ORCPT ); Thu, 3 Jul 2008 09:57:53 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751615AbYGCN5m (ORCPT ); Thu, 3 Jul 2008 09:57:42 -0400 Received: from casper.infradead.org ([85.118.1.10]:51779 "EHLO casper.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752460AbYGCN5l (ORCPT ); Thu, 3 Jul 2008 09:57:41 -0400 Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 06:56:30 -0700 From: Arjan van de Ven To: "Giacomo A. Catenazzi" Cc: Tigran Aivazian , Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu, Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, David Woodhouse , "Selbak, Rolla N" , Shaohua Li Subject: Re: Intel Microcode loader, tg3 driver, and the -rc8-mmotd New World Order firmware... Message-ID: <20080703065630.2aefc930@infradead.org> In-Reply-To: <486C9AD2.6020604@debian.org> References: <4534.1215048758@turing-police.cc.vt.edu> <32146.1215066947@turing-police.cc.vt.edu> <486C9AD2.6020604@debian.org> Organization: Intel X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.3.1 (GTK+ 2.12.10; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by casper.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1220 Lines: 27 On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:24:34 +0200 "Giacomo A. Catenazzi" wrote: > There are two format of Intel CPU microcode and two methods to load > it. > - old: the microcodes are in a big file, which include multiple > microcodes (for multiple CPU). The driver require a char device > and a user space loader ("microcode_ctl") > - new: one microcode per file, using the 'request_firmware' > infrastructure. No user space support needed. > > Actually Intel provides only the old methods. > There was talks with Arjan and Intel about the distribution format > for the new methods. But I don't have any new. > I think that when the new format is fully specified (directory > structure, tar, gzip,...) Intel will distribute the microcodes > in the new form. we hope to switch to the new form but there's the small case of "installed base" using ancient kernels, and it's kind of not nice to have to release 2 sets. At some point we will switch over though. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/