I wonder if intel-ucode is being used

Yes, I just checked it:

 pacman -Qi intel-ucode
Name            : intel-ucode
Version         : 20200616-1
Description     : Microcode update files for Intel CPUs
Architecture    : any
URL             : https://github.com/intel/Intel-Linux-Processor-Microcode-Data-Files
Licenses        : custom
Groups          : None
Provides        : None
Depends On      : None
Optional Deps   : None
Required By     : None
Optional For    : None
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : microcode_ctl
Installed Size  : 3.02 MiB
Packager        : Christian Hesse <arch@eworm.de>
Build Date      : Tue 16 Jun 2020 07:50:07 PM CEST
Install Date    : Wed 15 Jul 2020 01:42:30 PM CEST
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed
Install Script  : No
Validated By    : Signature
pacman -Ql intel-ucode

intel-ucode /boot/
intel-ucode /boot/intel-ucode.img
intel-ucode /usr/
intel-ucode /usr/share/
intel-ucode /usr/share/licenses/
intel-ucode /usr/share/licenses/intel-ucode/
intel-ucode /usr/share/licenses/intel-ucode/LICENSE

But the odd thing:

ls /boot 
efi  grub  initramfs-linux-fallback.img  initramfs-linux.img  initramfs-linux-zen-fallback.img  initramfs-linux-zen.img  memtest86+  vmlinuz-linux  vmlinuz-linux-zen

The inel-ucode.img is not there.