[arch-general] Intel microcode - latest version not loading

[Dutch Ingraham]

Hi all:

I'm having an issue with Intel microcode loading.  Specifically, the microcode
does not appear to be loading the latest version:

~ $ dmesg | grep microcode
[    0.000000] microcode: microcode updated early to revision 0x19, date = 2013-06-21
[    0.931272] microcode: sig=0x106a5, pf=0x2, revision=0x19
[    0.931319] microcode: Microcode Update Driver: v2.2.


My processor is:

~ $ grep -E 'family|model|stepping' -m 4 /proc/cpuinfo
cpu family      : 6
model           : 26
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           W3503  @ 2.40GHz
stepping        : 5

The Intel website indicates the latest version of microcode for this processor
is version 20171117 [1].  However, as indicated above, the version loaded at
boot is dated 2013-06-21.

I have the latest stable version of intel-ucode installed:

~ $ pacman -Q intel-ucode
intel-ucode 20180108-1

I have updated GRUB with <grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg>, and rebooted.
The grub.cfg file shows, as the last line in the menuentry:
'initrd  /boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux.img'

I am using a stock kernel:

~ $ uname -a
Linux arch2 4.15.5-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Feb 22 22:15:20 UTC 2018 x86_64 GNU/Linux


Can someone help me determine what is going on here?


[1] https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27337/Linux-Processor-Microcode-Data-File?product=40799