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[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <1435695@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The microcode update bundle (or collection, or package) contains a
number of microcode updates.  That's the date in the package version
(20150121 in this case).

The release date of the collection of microcode updates is independent
of the date of a particular microcode update.

There are hundreds of microcode updates in the update collection, with a
very large variance in their dates.  Some are very new (Intel changed
them recently), while others are more than a decade old (they have not
been changed since).

The kernel logs data about the specific microcode update it installed.
It will never match the package date, there will always be at least a
few days difference: someone has to approve each new microcode update
for public distribution, prepare the updated microcode collection with
all of them, and send it to the Intel website, and that takes at least a
couple days.

Run this:
/usr/sbin/iucode_tool -l /lib/firmware/intel-ucode

and look at the dates of each microcode.

This is not a bug.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1435695

Title:
  [systemd] [microcode] latest intel-microcode not loaded

Status in ubuntu-drivers-common package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Journalctl have logged:

  ****** kernel: CPU0 microcode updated early to revision 0x70a, date =
  2010-09-29

  which is quite different from the latest intel-microcode upgrade:

  *******
  intel-microcode (3.20150121.1) unstable; urgency=critical

    * New upstream microcode data file 20150121
      * Downgraded microcodes (to a previously shipped revision):
        sig 0x000306f2, pf mask 0x6f, 2014-09-03, rev 0x0029, size 28672
      * The microcode downgrade fixes a very nasty regression on Xeon E5v3
        processors (closes: #776431)
    * critical urgency: the broken sig 0x306f2, rev 0x2b microcode shipped
      in release 20150107 caused CPU core hangs and Linux boot failures.
      The upstream fix was to downgrade it to the same microcode revision
      that was shipped in release 20140913
    * source: remove superseded upstream data file: 20150107.
    * initramfs.hook: do not mix arrays and lists.
      Avoid echo "foo $@", use echo "foo $*" instead.  This is unlikely
      to be expĺoitable, but it makes ShellCheck happier.

   -- Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@xxxxxxxxxx>  Wed, 28 Jan 2015 20:03:20 -0200
  *******

  both 'date' and 'rev' are not the same, which let me think that the
  'builtin microcode'is loaded instead of the intel-microcode file.

  So i also wonder if iucode-tool is able to deal with systemd, as its
  latest upgrade is quite older than the ubuntu's systemd use.

  *****
  iucode-tool (1.1.1-1) unstable; urgency=medium

    * New upstream release
      + Fix issues found by the Coverity static checker:
      + CID 72165: An off-by-one error caused an out-of-bounds write to a
        buffer while loading large microcode data files in ascii format
      + CID 72163: The code could attempt to close an already closed file
        descriptor in certain conditions when processing directories
      + CID 72161: Stop memory leak in error path when loading microcode
        data files
      + CID 72159, 72164, 72166, 72167, 72168, 72169: Cosmetic issues
        that could not cause problems at runtime
    * debian/control: bump standards version to 3.9.6

   -- Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@xxxxxxxxxx>  Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:02:42 -0200
  ******

  intel cpu q9550 : http://ark.intel.com/products/33924/Intel-Core2
  -Quad-Processor-Q9550-12M-Cache-2_83-GHz-1333-MHz-FSB

  oem@u32:~$ ubuntu-drivers devices
  == cpu-microcode.py ==
  driver   : intel-microcode - distro non-free
  ....

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
  Package: ubuntu-drivers-common 1:0.4.1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.19.0-10.10-generic 3.19.2
  Uname: Linux 3.19.0-10-generic i686
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  ApportVersion: 2.16.2-0ubuntu4
  Architecture: i386
  CurrentDesktop: GNOME
  Date: Tue Mar 24 08:12:05 2015
  SourcePackage: ubuntu-drivers-common
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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