I&#x27;m on my phone so I&#x27;ll try to address each of your points in order (copy paste is painful on mobile).<p>The tools available for that task are compact and I&#x27;d imagine quite portable based on the OSes they are already supported on. Huge vendor downloads aside, I don&#x27;t think the problem in the ecosystem is with those tools not being OSS.<p>Intel&#x27;s instruction set (ISA if you will, for those reading), is at a higher level than microcode. Microcode is specific to an architecture but not the instruction set. No programmer touches microcode and as far as I&#x27;m aware, it&#x27;s secret and proprietary.<p>The useful tools to be created that would be open are not related to bitstream formats. (This is actually an assumption that I cannot fully verify at this time.)<p>I&#x27;m not not sure how to address the last point. I&#x27;m not trying to be pedantic at all. I&#x27;ll come back to this as I wrap my head around it.<p>Edit: I&#x27;m continuing to make small edits to grammar and wording.