Some Intel Chips Can Be Reconfigured to Support AES

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 12:40:07AM -0500, Ivan Avery Frey wrote:
> I was reading the fine print on one of Intel's Spec pages and I
> found this little gem:
> 
> Some products can support AES New Instructions with a Processor
> Configuration update, in particular, i7-2630QM/i7-2635QM,
> i7-2670QM/i7-2675QM, i5-2430M/i5-2435M, i5-2410M/i5-2415M. Please
> contact OEM for the BIOS that includes the latest Processor
> configuration update.
> 
> Hmmm, does this update the firmware on the processor? Isn't that dangerous?

Given intel provides it and designed the chips to allow updating it at
runtime (The update is NOT permanent), no it isn't.

The chip is manufactured with one version, but can have an update applied
at boot into internal ram.  Linux can do that too even if you can't get
a bios update to do it for you.

Of course this being intel maybe the 'processor configuration update'
is different than the 'microcode update' I am thinking they mean.
intel has come out with some amazingly stupid features on some of their
chips lately where you can buy a cpu upgrade later and your cpu changes
from one model to another by running some intel software and paying
intel some money and it unlocks some disabled parts of your hardware.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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