On Mon, 24 Apr 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Apr 2000, Rogier Wolff wrote:
> >
> > And as, nowadays it is possible to upgrade the CPU in-circuit, even
> > under Linux, wouldn't it be an idea to just require the microcode
> > upgrade? This is EXACTLY what the microcode upgrade is for.
>
> This is not going to be microcode-upgradeable, I bet. Sure, certain
> companies I could mention can change everything they do with a microcode
> update, but on normal CPU's the kind of ordering issue between simple
> operations is probably not fixable with a software upgrade (well, maybe
> the cache replacement policy might be updated or something, but we're
> talking simple operations like "mov to memory" here which are definitely
> not handled by microcode.)
The mov itself wouldn't be in microcode, as it surely maps to one uop, but
most the instruction scheduler probably is (since it's probably
table-driven). And its either the scheduling or the cache management
protocol that'd have to be iffy to result in a problem.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 30 2000 - 21:00:07 EST