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What are the ways in which this microcode update is enforced? Is it something that ships with your os? or something that user has to manually install like a BIOS update?

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Would probably be a BIOS update distributed from the motherboard manufacturer. As the article states, people could just not update,but finding hardware with the older BIOS will be more and more difficult over time.

Why couldn't the OS just put the microcode update into the EFI bootloader?

I know some recent Intel parts can't even run the EFI firmware without first getting a microcode update, but is Skylake like this too or can the EFI bootloader run without first getting microcode downloaded?

Linux effectively does if your distro opts in.

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