Arch Linux

cholas

Member

Registered: 2018-03-07

Posts: 2

Broken Microcode [SOLVED]

Hello,
i'm new on archlinux even if i tried all sort of distros before getting here. Problem is (i think it's a problem) that i update my micro code (intel i3-7100U cpu) as in every distro i intalled before but it wasn't very "immediate" as I used to. Long story short i followed the wiki instructions to updated it everything worked fine during reboot but when i checked if everything is ok this is what i got :

dmesg | grep microcode
[    0.000000] microcode: microcode updated early to revision 0x80, date = 2018-01-04
[    0.000000] Intel Spectre v2 broken microcode detected; disabling Speculation Control
[    0.360077] microcode: sig=0x806e9, pf=0x80, revision=0x80
[    0.360284] microcode: Microcode Update Driver: v2.2.

My concerns are about that "Spectre v2 broken microcode..." is that a problem? Or could it be in the future? (Because you know,broken doesn't sound very good) I googled it but I didn't find a lot about that and it's my first time in such a complex os, but i really like to experience linux in this way. I'd like to know if i did something wrong and most of all what i did wrong or if everything's ok, what does that broken microcode stuff means.
Thank you (:

Last edited by cholas (2018-03-08 07:55:50)

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,327

Re: Broken Microcode [SOLVED]

Welcome to the arch linux forums cholas.  The kernel detected a microcode updated known to have broken speculation control so the kernel disabled that functionality.
There are no known other issues with the microcode update so the kernel does not prevent the update just does not use the additional functionality that is known to be broken.
Edit:
There are new microcode releases that address the issue for some CPU's but they have not been made publicly available yet https://newsroom.intel.com/wp-content/u … idance.pdf

Last edited by loqs (2018-03-07 22:13:38)

cholas

Member

Registered: 2018-03-07

Posts: 2

Re: Broken Microcode [SOLVED]

Welcome to the arch linux forums cholas.  The kernel detected a microcode updated known to have broken speculation control so the kernel disabled that functionality.
There are no known other issues with the microcode update so the kernel does not prevent the update just does not use the additional functionality that is known to be broken.
Edit:
There are new microcode releases that address the issue for some CPU's but they have not been made publicly available yet https://newsroom.intel.com/wp-content/u … idance.pdf

Well good to know, very useful reply thank you very much