3 ms·
Do you know of any systems that dynamically updated their microcode or is microcode relatively fixed? My understand is the Burroughs series of mainframes were
by sitkack 6y ago
Do you know of any systems that dynamically updated their microcode or is microcode relatively fixed?
My understand is the Burroughs series of mainframes were designed to support user definable instruction sets so that a computing site would be optimized for specific workloads and languages.
- pwg 6y agoIntel CPU's (as well as AMD's) have the ability to load microcode patches to correct/fix bugs that are found post manufacture. In fact, many of the spectre/meltdown mitigations that occurred after those exploits became known were in the form of microcode patches to the various CPU models. Note, this is not "user definable", but it is updatable microcode.
- kens 6y agoThe Xerox Alto was famous for its user-writeable microcode (among other things). Different languages could use microcode that was optimized for the language's operations. Even some games had custom microcode for high performance.
- bogomipz 6y ago>"My understand is the Burroughs series of mainframes were designed to support user definable instruction sets so that a computing site would be optimized for specific workloads and languages." This is fascinating although I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it. Would "user" here be an engineer or field tech from Burroughs or mainframe admin at the company the was leasing the Burroughs system. You would have to have very intimate knowledge of CPU architecture to sort of roll you own instruction set no? Or am I misunderstanding this and it would be more about removing some inefficient instructions for a specific type of workload?