@dushman >It's gonna be preloaded anyways so you might as well get them for they fixes they provide
I have sadly concluded that all hardware is proprietary, so I don't see any difference between instructions in ROM and a circuit - all I focus on is if that circuit it malicious.

>If you want something 100% free then make a Risc V rig lel.
Yes, I have concluded a free hardware design of a RISC-V implementation, running on a fast FGPA that can be programmed with only free software is the only way forwards, but that's sadly not feasible yet.

>You will still have proprietary code running even if you don't install it yourself on any AMD64 machine.
Obviously, but I don't see any proprietary software licenses to agree to for such software.

@meso >that's glowie bullshit. they dont actually provide fixes, just spyware
Indeed, I have the suspicion that intel doesn't risk putting backdoors into the hardware microcode, as someone is going to eventually decap the die and cut it layer by layer and read the contents of the microcode.

If I was intel, I would intentionally make the hardware microcode unstable and then release a encrypted, ultra-obfuscated, undocumented instruction set proprietary microcode update with a fix for the stability "issue" and all of the backdoors.

What else would explain the proprietary software license on the microcode updates that forbid reverse engineering?