Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen OC_Formula for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com, July 23, according to previous revelations, AMD plans to launch a new Zen 5 architecture CPU in 2024, and related products are expected to be released in the first half of 2024 at the earliest.

AMD has now submitted an update to the Linux kernel to increase the maximum size of CPU microcode patches. In other words, future Zen 5 series processors may have 32KB microcode, which is nearly twice as large as existing processors (CTOnews.com note, current size 12KB, that is, three times the 4096 bytes of Linux core).

This means that AMD may support more complex instructions on the upcoming Zen 5 architecture and subsequent products, or make room to add new features after release, or want to update the microcode design in a more thorough way.

It is worth mentioning that AMD said in a statement that the microcode of future processors will exceed the current limit of three 4K pages. AMD believes that "a significant increase in size can be avoided in the future".

Of course, the microcode of the Zen 5 architecture processor is not necessarily 2.6x or more than that of the Zen 4 architecture processor, but it is actually getting bigger, at least leaving enough room for AMD's future expansion plan.

CPU microcode is the basic code that defines how it runs, and it is largely a guide to how the processor executes each machine code instruction: decomposing high-level machine code instructions into simpler hardware-level instructions that the processor can execute.

Microcode for processors can usually be updated to allow developers to fix errors or security vulnerabilities after the product is deployed. In general, the more complex the instruction set, the more complex the microcode. Therefore, if AMD is to implement complex new instruction set extensions in its Zen 5-based products and subsequent products, it needs to expand its microcode size first.

In addition, another reason for increasing the size of CPU microcode is that AMD may add new features or functions (instructions, optimizations, hardware bug fixes, security enhancements, etc.) so that this can be done without having to redesign the entire CPU.

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