Linux - Microcode

Microcode is a technique that imposes an interpreter between the hardware and the architectural level of a computer. Processor vendors, e.g., Intel and AMD, release updates to the processor microcode for some reasons, e.g., bug fixes, which can be applied by the Linux kernel during boot.

For AMD processors, the microcode is covered by package linux-firmware which is installed as part of the base system. Therefore, no specific processing is needed. While for Intel processors, it is not the truth. Package intel-ucode must be manually installed.

For Arch Linux OS, the package intel-ucode can be conveniently installed by following command.

pacman -S intel-ucode

After the installation, in order to make the Linux kernel apply the microcode, image /boot/intel-ucode.img must be enabled as te first initrd in the bootloader configuration file. Taking grub for instance, its configuration file must be regenerated.

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Afterwards, the updated microcode is able to be loaded at the boot.