Intel Releases New CPU Microcode To Fix A Variety Of Functional Issues

Intel on Tuesday released the microcode-20261110 package that ships updated CPU microcode binaries for recent Intel Core (Ultra) and Xeon processors. The updated CPU microcode is for Core Gen 13 "Raptor Lake" and newer while on the Xeon server side is for Sapphire Rapids and newer. This is also the first time Clearwater Forest has seen microcode updates. The new microcode binaries are for Sapphire Rapids, Emerald Rapids, Granite Rapids, Sierra Forest, and Clearwater Forest on the server side. On the client side is Raptor Lake, Wildcat Lake, and Panther Lake seeing updates. This round of microcode updates appear to all be for functional issues without any new security issues. The Panther Lake fixes include for overcounting of topdown performance monitoring events, undercounting of performance monitoring events for walk pending, incorrect counting of performance monitoring sub events for load head, and undercounting of performance monitoring events for memory bound stalls. So if you're not making use of Intel performance monitoring events, the microcode update isn't particularly pressing. For Granite Rapids there is a DICE AliasID Certificate DiceTcbInfo fix and incorrect reporting of CPU core counts via the Processor Information ROM (PIROM) for certain SKUs. This just affects the PIROM core count reporting for the BMC firmware and management tooling. Going back to Raptor Lake are just some updates pertaining to existing erratum. The updated Intel CPU microcode and more information on this revision can be found via GitHub.