Hugo Landau has written a blog post about why Intel will never let hardware owners control the Management Engine. The Intel Managment Engine (ME) is a secondary microprocessor ensconced in recent Intel x86 chips, running an Intel-signed, proprietary, binary blob which provides remote access over the network as well as direct access to memory and peripherals. Because of the code signing restrictions enforced by the hardware, it cannot be modified or replaced by the user.
Intel/AMD will never allow machine owners to control the code executing on the ME/PSP because they have decided to build a business on preventing you from doing so. In particular, it's likely that they're actually contractually obligated not to let you control these processors.
The reason is that Intel literally decided to collude with Hollywood to integrate DRM into their CPUs; they conspired with media companies to lock you out of certain parts of your machine. After all, this is the company that created HDCP.
This DRM functionality is implemented on the ME/PSP. Its ability to implement DRM depends on you not having control over it, and not having control over the code that runs on it. Allowing you to control the code running on the ME would directly compromise an initiative which Intel has been advancing for over a decade.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday July 24 2018, @02:04PM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_device_driver#ATI/AMD [wikipedia.org] "The FOSS drivers for ATI-AMD GPUs are being developed under the name Radeon (xf86-video-ati or xserver-xorg-video-radeon). They still must load proprietary microcode into the GPU to enable hardware acceleration." (Emphasis mine.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 24 2018, @05:40PM (1 child)
It's microcode. I'm not sure that the "source" is anything more than comments next to blobs of bits?
Maybe the industry has advanced but I'm not sure what there is to see
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @08:00AM
Seeing is one thing. Modifying and distributing another.