08-12-2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by
balaji_prk
This ran through my mind while writing a doc, may be dumb one.
I have seen people using the terms Microcode and Firmware in IBM system p world interchangeably.
Firmware update or microcode update
Is that right? Are they synonyms?
Um, yes and no :-) Firmware is a piece of software for different kind of peripherals (routers, switches, ...). Microcode goes into the CPU, providing a slightly higher level or more complex commands based on the CPU's basic ("hard-wired") commands. For example, Digital's (R.I.P) VAX (R.I.P) used to have a microcode command to solve a polynomial.
pen
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LEARN ABOUT SUSE
microcode_ctl
MICROCODE_CTL(8) System Manager's Manual MICROCODE_CTL(8)
NAME
microcode_ctl - microcode utility for Intel IA32 processors
SYNOPSIS
microcode_ctl [-h] [-u] [-q] [-Q] [-f microcode]
DESCRIPTION
The microcode_ctl utility is a companion to the IA32 microcode driver written by Tigran Aivazian <tigran@aivazian.fsnet.co.uk>. The utility
has two uses:
a) it decodes and sends new microcode to the kernel driver to be uploaded to Intel IA32 processors. (Pentium Pro, PII, Celeron, PIII, Xeon,
Pentium 4 etc)
b) it signals the kernel driver to release the buffers containing the copy of microcode data actually applied to given CPU, linear array of
2048 bytes per CPU, see struct microcode in include/asm/processor.h for information on the layout of chunks buffers may hold
The microcode update is volatile and needs to be uploaded on each system boot i.e. it doesn't reflash your cpu permanently, reboot and it
reverts back to the old microcode.
-h display usage and exit
-u upload microcode (from default filename)
-f upload microcode from named Intel formatted file
-q run silently when successful
-Q run silently even on failure
EXAMPLE
microcode_ctl -u
Upload microcode using defaults
FILES
/usr/share/misc/intel-microcode.dat
The default microcode location
AUTHOR
Microcode utility written by Simon Trimmer
Linux Kernel driver written by Tigran Aivazian.
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to either Simon Trimmer <simon@urbanmyth.org> or Tigran Aivazian <tigran@aivazian.fsnet.co.uk>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2000 VERITAS Software
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICU-
LAR PURPOSE.
SPECIAL THANKS
Thanks to the Intel Corporation, for supplying microcode update data and publishing the specifications that enabled us to write microcode
driver for Linux.
SEE ALSO
The brave are recommended to view the driver source code located in the Linux Kernel source tree in arch/i386/kernel/microcode.c
Visit http://www.urbanmyth.org/microcode/ for more information and microcode updates.
microcode_ctl 19 September 2006 MICROCODE_CTL(8)