An optical transceiver (or optical transmitter or optical receiver) that is coupled to a host computing system. The optical transceiver includes a system memory and at least one processor. The optical transceiver operates at least in part by the processor executing microcode from system memory. In order to change operation, the optical transceiver pages microcode segments from the host computing system to the system memory of the optical transceiver to adjust for changing operational circumstances. For example, by this paging, microcode segments that are more likely to be used given the current operational circumstances are loaded into the system memory of the optical transceiver, while microcode segments that are less likely to be used given the current operational circumstances are retained at the host computing system.