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How-To: Disabling the Intel Management Engine

posted by martyb on Monday October 16 2017, @01:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the b-b-b-but-I-have-an-AMD! dept.

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

We've covered that it was possible and in theory how to do so before but I think having a proper How-To written up will save even us nerd types some hair pulling. Here's what you'll need to start:

  • an Intel-CPU-based target PC — that does not have Boot Guard enabled — on which you wish to disable the IME;
    • the target PC may be running an OEM BIOS (such as AMI, Dell etc.), or coreboot;
  • a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B single board computer ('RPi3'), for use as an external flash programmer;
  • a spare >= 8GB microSD card (to hold the 64-bit Gentoo O/S image we will use for the RPi3);
  • an appropriate IC clip for your target PC's flash chip, e.g.:
    • a Pomona 5250 for SOIC-8 chips;
    • a Pomona 5208 for unsocketed DIP-8 chips, or
    • a Pomona 5252 for SOIC-16 chips;
  • 8 female-female connector wires (to attach the appropriate clip to the RPi3's GPIO header);
  • a maintenance manual for your target PC, where available, to assist in safe disassembly / reassembly; and
    • whatever tools are stipulated in the above.

Given the above list, you'll obviously need to be comfortable identifying and connecting an IC clip to your flash chip. So, it's not a procedure for most grandmothers but neither is especially complex or difficult for the vast majority of desktop machines (laptop/other difficulty will vary widely). Also, the guide explicitly does not cover PLCC or WSON flash chips, so you're out of luck here if your board has such.

Happy hacking, folks.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @04:08AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 16 2017, @04:08AM (#582901)

    Any real stats about that Talos II? It's not a crappy embedded CPU abused to be a PC. It seems to come with 2 CPUs, each with 4 cores, and each with 4 threads (called SMT4 by IBM, instead of x86's 2 so far, and Power9 also has SMT8 option). 2 sockets, 8 cores, 32 threads, with 180W TDP. The board has 16 ECC DDR4 slots, can fit up to 2TB. Also three 16x PCIe 4.0 and two 4x. That is going to cost money on x86 too, if avaliable at all.

    So how does it really compare to AMD/Intel offerings? Anyone with Power8 experience (Power 9 is 1.5-2.2x times better by IBM paper)?

    For reference (sparse on final GHz or even bogomips to get an idea):
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER9 [wikipedia.org]
    https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL2WK2/intro.html [raptorcs.com]
    https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/form/anonymous/api/wiki/61ad9cf2-c6a3-4d2c-b779-61ff0266d32a/page/1cb956e8-4160-4bea-a956-e51490c2b920/attachment/56cea2a9-a574-4fbb-8b2c-675432367250/media/POWER9-VUG.pdf [ibm.com]

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  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Monday October 16 2017, @10:36AM

    by driverless (4770) on Monday October 16 2017, @10:36AM (#582950)

    A system can be underperforming in two senses, you pay PC prices for something with the performance of a cellphone, or you pay high-end server prices for something that performs like a PC. The Talos II is the latter, the price makes it a top-of-the-line PowerEdge, the specs make it an eBayed Inspiron.