Intel Says Some CPU Models Will Never Receive Microcode Updates (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Intel released an update to the Meltdown and Spectre mitigation guide, revealing that it stopped working on mitigations for some processor series. The Meltdown and Spectre mitigation guide is a PDF document that Intel published in February. The file contains information on the status of microcode updates for each of Intel's CPU models released in the past years. Intel has constantly updated the document in the past weeks with new information about processor series and the microcode firmware version number that includes patches for the Meltdown and Spectre flaws.

An update published on Monday includes for the first time a "Stopped" production status. Intel says that processors with a "Stopped" status will not receive microcode updates. The reasons basically vary from "redesigning the CPU micro-architecture is impossible or not worth the effort" to "it's an old CPU" and "customers said they don't need it." The following Intel processor products received a "Stopped" status marker: Bloomfield, Bloomfield Xeon, Clarksfield, Gulftown, Harpertown Xeon C0, Harpertown Xeon E0, Jasper Forest, Penryn/QC, SoFIA 3GR, Wolfdale C0, Wolfdale M0, Wolfdale E0, Wolfdale R0, Wolfdale Xeon C0, Wolfdale Xeon E0, Yorkfield, and Yorkfield Xeon.

Comments

This is BS.

[Joey Vegetables]

I'm sorry, but if I'm investing in a high-end, server-class CPU, I expect it to be supported for as long as is reasonably possible. If they said they weren't updating 10 year old Celerons or Atoms, that might be understandable. But Xeons? Let's just say I don't plan to every buy one again, at least so long as AMD represents a reasonable alternative. In fact, I will always stick with AMD (as I long have, for other reasons) until and unless Intel makes some kind of definite, enforceable support commitment.

Re:This is BS.

[Archtech]

The processor of the PC on which I am writing this is just ten years old. Why do you believe that a ten-year-old processor should not be in use? (You should see my car: it's 18 years old. But then it's a Volvo, properly designed and robustly built).

It's not even as if you can buy processors today that are very much faster than my ancient i7-940. Their price/performance may be better, but guess what? I don't care because I *already paid for mine*. Of course, I am referring to single-core performance which is the limiting factor for most desktop applications. The i7-940 has four cores, which I feel is about right for a desktop - any software that does benefit from parallelism will see a significant speed-up.

Perhaps you are a devotee of the cult of technical progress. In which case you should take a long look at the facts, and understand that Intel microprocessors are not a very good example of such progress.

Re:This is BS.

[blind biker]

AMD may or may not be drastically better,

Seeing as though AMD CPUs are not susceptible to Meltdown, I would say they have an enormous advantage over intel's. The fact is that Meltdown, unlike Spectre, is very easily exploitable in practical terms, and is the one people should be actually worried about.

Re:Old CPU's...and does it matter?

[freeze128]

A BIOS update would certainly be nice, but it's not necessary. The OS can apply microcode updates (both windows and linux) during boot time. Also, these microcode updates don't survive a power-off event. There is no flash memory on the CPU. The OS would need to apply the microcode on every boot, which is what it does.

Baby I'm Amazed

[jonesy16]

The sheer number of insults being thrown at Intel over this issue is pure amazement. Comparisons to cars (#causeSlashdot) and of course to AMD (#flameon), but it seems to me that there are far too great of expectations for the level of support a company should provide, especially given the sheer complexity of a processor and how it relates to security threats. To expect the design of something like a general purpose CPU to be perfect out of the door and error-free for the next several decades seems ridiculous to me. The claims that people now have to throw away their hardware because of this seem equally ridiculous.

At some point, ANY for-profit company is going to stop supporting an old product, especially in a low-margin environment. The sheer rate of technological advancement almost necessitates that. Let's stop blaming Intel for what is effectively an industry-normal rate of support. Consider that 10 years ago:

We were on the 2.4 Linux Kernel (no longer supported with updates)
Intel Processors were running on LGA775 sockets (NewEgg sells only 2 compatible motherboards directly, both from ASRock. ASUS/Gigabyte/ETC all don't sell compatible motherboards anymore)
We were running RHEL 2/3/4, all of which are no longer supported

But I don't see anyone griping that these other entities are engaged in the practice of forced upgrades, leaving their trusted and loyal customers hanging in the face of growing security concerns. So maybe all the Intel bashing should either subside or should be expanded to the entire industry, but I think the latter is a bit naive. Security threats evolve, new ones are created, old ones forgotten or mitigated. If it were easy, there wouldn't be a dozen new packages to update my OS every day. Remember that Intel can't just push all updates to these older architectures by themselves either, some require BIOS updates and now you're expecting motherboard companies to update a product they haven't touched in a decade as well.