Given the ever-increasing importance of having an up-to-date CPU microcode due to bugs in hardware which enable completely side-stepping system security, I would like to suggest that Intel publishes a CPU microcode database queryable using web API which would allow diagnostics utilities such as AIDA64, CPU-Z, etc to check whether the user's CPU is running the latest available update.
I propose having the following queries:
1. /GetLatestUCode -- when presented with CPUID family / model / stepping (0x506e3 for example) return the latest available production microcode revision and its release date.
2. /GetCurrentUCodeDate -- when presented with CPUID family / model / stepping (0x506e3 for example) and microcode update revision (0xBA for example) return the release date of said microcode update revision.
This is something Intel could easily do, and it would raise awareness of customers thereby forcing the vendors to deliver microcode updates sooner than they are doing now.
