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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
During April and May, Intel started updating processor documentation with a new errata note, and over the weekend we learned why: Skylake and Kaby Lake silicon has a microcode bug.
The errata is described in detail on the Debian mailing list, and affects Skylake and Kaby Lake Intel Core processors (in desktop, high-end desktop, embedded and mobile platforms), Xeon v5 and v6 server processors, and some Pentium models.
The Debian advisory says affected users need to disable hyper-threading "immediately" in their BIOS or UEFI settings, because the processors can "dangerously misbehave when hyper-threading is enabled."
Symptoms can include "application and system misbehaviour, data corruption, and data loss".
Henrique de Moraes Holschuh, who authored the Debian post, notes that all operating systems, not only Linux, are subject to the bug.
Also at Tom's Hardware and Ars Technica.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @11:21PM
All the microcode updates involve SRAM changes in-cpu, meaning powering the system off reverts the processors to their fused microcode.
The only exception I have heard of is the OEM motherboard/cpus having an e-fused key which locks the cpu/motherboard together, but you would need to read online for more info on that. (Supposedly the motherboard will attempt to do the same to any non-K series CPU inserted into it, rendering it tied to the motherboard vendor/oem system integrator.