If I have no access to the firmware, but neither does anyone else, then it&#x27;s just a part of the hardware. That is okay.<p>I don&#x27;t care whether a given processor is microcoded via a tiny ROM, or whether it is all hard-wired gates; the difference is just in the instruction execution timings.<p>We are not &quot;hosed&quot; in any way by this.<p>As soon as the microcode is writable, then we have questions: can <i>anyone</i> write any arbitrary microcode and put it in place? Or is there some tamper-proof layer containing that only accepts signed microcode, and who has the keys?