Comment by throwaway2037
9 hours ago
Why is this downvoted? (At the time of writing, the text is grey, so it has at least a few downvotes.)
This is a good question. As others have noted below, yes, and sometimes you can see kernel logging on start-up when the microcode is loaded.
It's a dumb question, because it's in reply to a comment that already implies the answer, and it's trivial to find an answer online in less time than it takes to post that question and wait for someone to supply an answer.
The subject of CPU microcode update mechanisms is an interesting and relevant topic, but such a shallow, low-effort question is not a good way to promote interesting discussion on that topic.
Classic HN elitism. Oh this peasant doesn't know the basics and dares to ask question that I deem stupid? DOWNVOTE
It’s not elitism, it’s just self defense. Every forum starts out with high–value high–signal low–noise conversations and gradually decays towards low–signal high–noise conversations as new people are brought in. The new people are, by definition, new. They don’t know much if anything yet so they cannot participate meaningfully in advanced topics. Naturally they ask questions in order to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. It is simply unfortunate that the effect is to increase the amount of noise in the forum as each new member asks the same questions over and over again. This leads to the most knowledgeable members of the forum dropping out, as the quality of the discussion drops below the point where it is worth their time.
See also “Eternal September”.