Your distribution probably has a firmware package that has this bootloader stub. It applies the latest microcode updates just before your OS actually begins starting up (but for Linux after the Kernel has initialized things and is preparing to hand off to the initrd).
Yes, this is something that needs to happen at every boot; they don't get burned in to the CPU.
I downloaded the microcode updates from Intel, but hesitate to apply them because one of the expected directories does not exist on Manjaro, so I'm out of my element on how supported the update would be. Do you happen to know if in general microcode updates are distributed in packages? It seems that's probably the case, and if so, I'm fine waiting.
For LINUX (and probably BSD/etc users):
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/microcode#Enabling_Inte...
Your distribution probably has a firmware package that has this bootloader stub. It applies the latest microcode updates just before your OS actually begins starting up (but for Linux after the Kernel has initialized things and is preparing to hand off to the initrd).
Yes, this is something that needs to happen at every boot; they don't get burned in to the CPU.