"Project X" - Pure Open-Source Coreboot Support On AMD Zen
Not only are AMD Ryzen 5000 series completely dominating in performance but they could soon see open-source Coreboot support as an alternative to the proprietary firmware/BIOS. Project X is an interesting effort around blob-free Coreboot/Oreboot support on AMD Zen.
Ron Minnich of Google who has been one of the original developers to Coreboot/LinuxBIOS has been engaged in "Project X" for providing "pure open-source" support on AMD Zen platforms.
Project X is about "eXcising binary blobs from the x86 part of Zen CPUs." This open-source AMD Zen support is being worked on both for Coreboot and the Oreboot downstream that is written in Rust.
Minnich will be talking about Project X in more detail next month during the Open-Source Firmware Conference (OSFC 2020) taking place at the start of the month.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2020, @10:33PM (1 child)
Trumplins suxxor!!!
(Score: 2, Informative) by unauthorized on Friday November 06 2020, @11:17PM
You need a better hobby.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06 2020, @11:29PM (3 children)
Would be really cool if this disables or allows replacement of code that runs on the AMD PSP [wikipedia.org]. Unclear from the article or comments there if this is the case.
People rightfully complain about Intel's Management Engine but sometimes forget AMD has something similar.
(Score: 4, Informative) by unauthorized on Saturday November 07 2020, @03:09AM (2 children)
Disabling PSP on AMD chips is officially supported via a BIOS switch, through not all motherboards implement the option. Intel on the other hand not allow disabling IME at all, your only choice with their hardware is a partial third party hack me_cleaner [github.com].
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday November 07 2020, @09:48AM
Just what I was wondering about. I presume that the BIOS switch can also re-enable the PSP? If so, I would feel more comfortable with an old fashioned jumper connection or some other physical, hardware based control on the motherboard, to prevent software from changing that state. But, if the Open source Coreboot BIOS controls that and can be formally verified as bug free, I could live with that too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by epitaxial on Sunday November 08 2020, @04:31AM
Plenty of boards allow disabling of the IME. I can do it on my Lenovo box and the funny part is it makes Windows take an extra minute to boot. It even gives errors in the event viewer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2020, @03:10PM
f they are successful, this will make a modern x86 finally usable by those who value software freedom. Things like the Raptor by Talos already exist for high performance freedom respecting computing, but they are priced out of reach for most of us. A commodity x86 without a bunch of untrustworthy binary blobs will be very welcome.
For those who don't care about their freedom, they still benefit by getting a bios that isn't a hacky insecure mess.
Very much looking forward to hearing about their progress.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 07 2020, @06:15PM
and may the swartz be with you!