linux-kernel - Re: Fix built-in early-load Intel microcode alignment

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Message-ID: <20200113204611.GS13310@zn.tnic>
Date:   Mon, 13 Jan 2020 21:46:11 +0100
From:   Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>
To:     Jari Ruusu <jari.ruusu@...il.com>
Cc:     Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@...nel.org>,
        Fenghua Yu <fenghua.yu@...el.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        johannes.berg@...el.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        stable@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Fix built-in early-load Intel microcode alignment

On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 10:30:13PM +0200, Jari Ruusu wrote:
> On 1/13/20, Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de> wrote:
> > Btw, just out of curiosity: why are you using built-in microcode and not
> > the initrd method?
> 
> Initrd method is better when it is a kernel intended to be booted
> on many different computers. Built-in microcode method kernel is
> tuned for one computer only. It is less hassle that way.

Oh well, you only need to do an initrd which is not that big of a deal.

The built-in method requires you to rebuild the kernel when there's
new microcode but new microcode is a relatively seldom occurrence
in practice. The last two years putting my statistics completely
out-of-whack.

But they should be coming back to normal because there should simply
be no more room for microcode patches anymore in the most x86 CPUs out
there. :)

So if you're building kernels often, it doesn't really matter if you do
initrd or builtin microcode.

-- 
Regards/Gruss,
    Boris.

https://people.kernel.org/tglx/notes-about-netiquette