(RAM and ROM above refers to electronic blocks at the processor core,
not to their chip-size counterparts)
Just to mention, Digital Alpha processors has some of the instruction
range microcode-loadable, and this is used to taylor the instructions to
the operating system it's running: VMS, Unix or NT.
Rubens Kuhl Jr.
rkuhljr@pueridomus.br
-----Original Message-----
From: Aleph One [SMTP:aleph1@DFW.NET]
Sent: Saturday, November 08, 1997 2:07 AM
To: BUGTRAQ@NETSPACE.ORG
Subject: Re: Intel Pentium Bug
> 2- New microcode will not be permanent, otherwise, if you, by
mistake,
> put garbage in your CPU, you'll not have to throw the CPU
in the trash.
Good point. But do they have enough memory to store the original
copy of
the microcode and the update? Unlikely, that memory is highly
expensive.
As other have pointed out you may need to use a device to
reprogram the
chip (makes sense). This would allow intel and OEMs to fix the
parts on
their inventory and to trade parts for customers concerned. Of
curse with
a problem of this magnitude _EVERYONE_ that runs a multiuser
system will
want to upgrade. Thats a lot of people. And a software fix would
make it
easy to distribute.
There must be some quite some activity tonight at Intel.