Warning try at own risk
IntroductionARM processors users can ignore this post as
An Arm processor SNIP does not use digital microcode SNIP
https://www.zdnet.com/article/arm-processors-everything-you-need-to-know-now/Bios updates are preferred over using early loading microcodes
Microcodes are useful if motherboard maker has no recent bios updates or
third party bios maker reluctant to provide updates or
you may be reluctant to flash bios as you may be concerned you might "brick" your motherboard.
Some motherboards can have dual bios setups YMMV
Kernel series 6.1 and higher no longer allow late loading of microcodes.
With kernel version 6.1 a late microcode loading is not possible anymore because it is now disabled by default
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/MicrocodeWhy else is it important to use early loading microcodes?
Loading microcode early can fix CPU issues before they are observed during kernel boot time
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v5.18/x86/microcode.htmlAs I do not have a Intel CPU I can not test. I find Intel more complex than AMD
and most wikis use iucode-tool so I cheat.
credits to Christian Hesse, maintainer of Arch package.
step 1 run all below code boxes as a local user note we are not root this time
USER=`cat /etc/sysconfig/tcuser`
LIST1="file zstd"
for Z in $LIST1
do
su -c "tce-load -w $Z" $USER
su -c "tce-load -i $Z" $USER
done
echo 'provides commands file and zstd'
step 2 bookmark this page in your favourite web browser
https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/intel-ucode/step 3
In above web page, top right hand corner, click on Download from Mirror
package will download, if firefox it defaults to ~/Downloads YMMV
change next commands to suit your download dir.
step 4
cd ~/Downloads
unzstd -d intel-ucode-*.tar.zst && tar xvf intel-ucode-*.tar
file boot/intel-ucode.img
step 5
copy intel-ucode.img from sub-directory boot under your download dir
to your real boot directory or grub dir and similar to AMD
copy your boot loader menu but adjust second copy so it reads something like
At time of writing I was on 14x alpha
menuentry "microcodes" {
set root=blah blah
linux blah blah
initrd /boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/rootfs64.gz /boot/modules64.gz
}
Adjust initrd line if you are not using a boot directory
step 6 full reboot and check if microcodes load
dmesg | grep microcode
Now the variations you will have:
A) no hits as your CPU is not (no longer) supported by Intel microcodes
B) a result that matched your research on what microcodes your bios already has
which means bios is up-to-date and microcodes not yet needed
C) a result of an update
Good Luck
If you like to build iucode-tool read next post.