# What is IA32 Microcode? Why wrong CPU freq?

## Loke^

What is IA32 Microcode?

I mean:

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> The microcode_ctl utility is a companion to the IA32 microcode driver
> 
> written by Tigran Aivazian <tigran@veritas.com>. The utility has two uses:
> ...

 

What?  :Smile: 

Could this be cousing my CPU to boot at a lower freq. almost every time?

Its a Laptop, P2 400Mhz. And very often it boots at 100Mhz or a bit higher..

The kernel im running has microcode enabled, but not the program installed.

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## BradN

The microcode update shouldn't affect the CPU speed, especially when you don't use the utility to make it update.

If you're using a laptop, what you probably have is some kind of power saving mode that is getting triggered by something.  Have you tried different things with APM and/or ACPI?

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## Loke^

Dad just told me what microcode is, its the level below assembly - ie. pure machine-code. (Hacker-father  :Smile: )

Anyways..

Im going to try another kernel-setup now, i dont doubt that could be causing the trouble..

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## BradN

Well, really, in this case, it's a sort of low level configuration as to how the CPU operates - if a bug were discovered in the processor, it might be possible to patch it through microcode, depending on what the problem is exactly.  It's not machine code in the sense of normal software that runs on the processor though.

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## pilla

You may want to play with a kernel that includes the cpufreq patch (mainly for mobile CPUs), then you can change on-the-fly the CPU speed.

I think that wolk-sources include it. You can also patch vanilla-sources.

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## MasonMouse

 *Loke^ wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Could this be cousing my CPU to boot at a lower freq. almost every time?
> 
> Its a Laptop, P2 400Mhz. And very often it boots at 100Mhz or a bit higher..
> ...

 

Laptops often will adjust to a lower CPU speed if booted while on battery power. I assume you know that but just in case...

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## zhenlin

One of the reasons why speed is more predictable on RISC machines... All instructions take exactly one cycle to complete since they are so simple!

Whereas Intel machines take between 1/2 a cycle to 20 cycles to process a single instruction, because each instruction translate into microcode, and [I assume that] the microcode takes a fixed amount of time to execute.

Microcode is a way of abstracting complex instructions. The RISC in CISC.

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## Loke^

I'll teach my father that  :Smile: 

Anyways, a new kernel takes about 3 hrs to compile now when its in dummy-mode, and the first try didnt work.  :Sad: 

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## dr_lha

 *Loke^ wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Could this be cousing my CPU to boot at a lower freq. almost every time?
> 
> Its a Laptop, P2 400Mhz. And very often it boots at 100Mhz or a bit higher..
> ...

 

Is it a Sony Vaio? I had one of those and if you allowed it in BIOS to vary the CPU speed under linux it always chose the slowest and stuck at that speed. The fix I did was just to go into the BIOS and set the CPU speed to be max at any power setting (i.e. not set to "auto"). Annoying but there you go. Perhaps ACPI and or cpufreq would help this, but as I sold the laptop 10 months ago I can't test it out.

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