Coreboot 4.12 Released - Drops Older Intel / AMD Platforms

[angrypie]

Paradigm Shifter Personally I never approved of Intel's shenanigans with sockets and chipsets. The last Intel CPU I bought was a Pentium 3.

We're a year or two away from DDR5/PCIe5, why not extend support a little bit and save a few million dollars on platform validation? The chiplet design means they have a lot more flexibility than Intel in this regard. The Threadripper situation was already a bit embarrassing, but at least they didn't promise anything with regard to socket compatibility.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Found the fanboy.

It's been SOP with Intel for a long time that new CPU requires new motherboard. Well, not really requires, as demonstrated by people getting chips working on boards that aren't officially supported, but few people seem to complain about that. Or how about when Intel decided to change the electrical layout of socket 775 so the new chips would fry if dropped into an older board? That was fun trying to explain to a (supposedly) tech savvy family member. Or the extremely short-lived socket 423 for Pentium 4?

It is understandable that people aren't happy, but it's now May 2020, AMD promised support for AM4 "through 2020"... and Ryzen 4000 still isn't out. So while I wouldn't say that AMD have abided by the implications of their statement (made in 2017 at the launch of AM4, IIRC) they haven't really broken their word. I've got an X370 board that (depending on what BIOS I update to) I can drop any CPU from three iterations of the Zen architecture into it and it'll work. I'm working really hard to come up with reasons not to drop a 3700X into said X370 board, beyond "don't really want to spend money now" (which, to be fair, is winning)...

A lot of this seems to be modern internet drama of people who just want something to complain about. Outside of enthusiast fora, I don't know any people who bought a Ryzen 1000 series with B350/X370 board and upgraded to either Ryzen 2000 or Ryzen 3000. Even among my tech enthusiast friends, I'm the only one to have dropped a 3900X into an X470 board. Others jumped on "PCI-E 4! Oh! Shiny!" and did the Intel-trained whole-platform shift.

Honestly, I could find more sympathy with the complainers if they had likewise lambasted Intel every time they pulled the similar trick. But on other fora, the most vocal condemntations of AMD for this come from the same people who either support Intel's new-CPU-new-socket-new-chipset strategy or at best mumbled something about "well it's best to get the fully compatible chipset anyway..."

[angrypie]

So childish.

Found the fanboy.

[andyprough]

That's a bullshit excuse and AMD knows it. Whoever is in charge of their PR needs to get shot.

So childish.

[angrypie]

Agreed -- that's why we invested so heavily in OpenPOWER. Fully open firmware from the factory, no mysterious ME/PSP type management binaries, and an open ISA too. You might want to take a look at the Blackbird for a (relatively) low cost entry point...I use one as my daily driver, quite happy with it overall!

I've already considered it but, sadly, I don't live in the US, importing this would cost me several organs.

[angrypie]

With current Zen3 support snag ( dropped from existing AM4 boards due to BIOS chip size ), Core/Libre/boot would make a killing...

That's a bullshit excuse and AMD knows it. Whoever is in charge of their PR needs to get fired.

Anyway, I don't think you can work around AGESA/PSP on anything post-AM3+, and pestering AMD to open up AGESA again might not work.

[Brane215]

When are they to offer support for AM4 ?
With current Zen3 support snag ( dropped from existing AM4 boards due to BIOS chip size ), Core/Libre/boot would make a killing...
And that's before considering newest crop of security issues everywhere...

[willmore]

I just installed it on an old chromebook (Lenovo X131e) so I could put linux on it. Didn't realize that was 'old'.

[andyprough]

You might want to take a look at the Blackbird for a (relatively) low cost entry point...I use one as my daily driver, quite happy with it overall!

I looked at it last year and wasn't happy with the available distros or the available graphics card drivers at the time. Can you tell us which distro you are using and which graphic card? Thanks!

[madscientist159]

Coreboot on x86 is like putting lipstick on a pig. We need a true open platform.

Agreed -- that's why we invested so heavily in OpenPOWER. Fully open firmware from the factory, no mysterious ME/PSP type management binaries, and an open ISA too. You might want to take a look at the Blackbird for a (relatively) low cost entry point...I use one as my daily driver, quite happy with it overall!