By: Anonymous (not.delete@this.amd.com), July 22, 2004 4:26 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
Max () on 7/22/04 wrote:
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>I'm a little surprised that they don't have a "lock-out" feature, i.e. once this
>bit is set no further microcode patches are accepted.
>
Even if a lockout feature were present, it would be useless if the BIOS never performed any microcode updates at boot time. Then the first update applied by user code or the OS would activate the lockout feature.
The BIOS of the machine I tested this on apparently did not apply any microcode updates, so any lockout feature was never engaged.
Besides, it's not that difficult to patch and reflash BIOS itself with a new microcode update (or no microcode updates at all), but that defeats the purpose of this approach.
---------------------------
>I'm a little surprised that they don't have a "lock-out" feature, i.e. once this
>bit is set no further microcode patches are accepted.
>
Even if a lockout feature were present, it would be useless if the BIOS never performed any microcode updates at boot time. Then the first update applied by user code or the OS would activate the lockout feature.
The BIOS of the machine I tested this on apparently did not apply any microcode updates, so any lockout feature was never engaged.
Besides, it's not that difficult to patch and reflash BIOS itself with a new microcode update (or no microcode updates at all), but that defeats the purpose of this approach.