Stefan Mileschin

Intel this week has published an update to their ongoing microcode guidance document. In the roughly 3 weeks since the last update, the company is offering some unexpectedly mixed news: some additional microcode updates have been finished and released to production, but the company is also aborting their previous plans for issuing updates for some early-generation Core processors.

Last month we reported on the state of Intel’s efforts to issue microcode updates for processors to mitigate the Spectre v2 vulnerability. As of mid-March Intel had finished developing microcode updates for architectures going back to 2nd generation Core (Sandy Bridge), and was in the middle of planning or pre-beta development of updates for processors going back to the Core 2 era. Instead, with this latest guidance, Intel is essentially putting an end to their microcode program, coming to a halt with microcode updates for about half of their 1st generation Core lineup. The end result is that no Core 2 CPUs will be receiving updates, and only some 1st gen Cores will.

Intel’s chip/architecture stack for these earlier generations is somewhat confusing due to a multitude of codenames, which doesn’t help matters here, but here’s the general breakdown of what processor families have been excised from Intel’s support plans.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12616...der-processors