AMD Is Making Progress On Open-Source Firmware - Initially With OpenBMC

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Is Making Progress On Open-Source Firmware - Initially With OpenBMC

While we are still waiting to see what AMD might do for returning to open-source AGESA or better supporting Coreboot and the like, they are making some inroads with open-source firmware support -- beyond the context of Chromebooks where they continue to engage due to Google's engineering requirements. AMD is working to "align with the industry direction of open-source firmware stacks" with their initial focus being on open-source OpenBMC firmware support for their server platforms...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-OpenBMC-2020-Progress

[doublez13]

Been seeing articles like this for years, but these projects never seem to trickle down to end user devices.

[uid313]

Vendors are dragging their knuckles when it comes to open source firmware. I wish Google not only required open source firmware for Chromebooks, but also for Android devices.
I wish Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon required open source firmware too. Intel and AMD are not doing enough. The motherboard manufacturers are really bad too.

[andyprough]

Raptor computers uses OpenBMC on their Talos open hardware systems, so this is good that AMD is moving in this direction. You could ultimately have libre AMD systems again.

However, OpenBMC on Talos has been criticized as being very slow, taking "over two minutes to get from turning on the power strip to a Fedora login and almost a full minute of that just to get the ability to start main power" (https://www.talospace.com/2019/11/be...-bring-up.html). Also, OpenBMC utilizes systemd and dbus, which is a very questionable direction for an embedded system and may contribute to the extremely slow startup time. There are different versions of OpenBMC, with Facebook using a different setup than what Talos uses. Hopefully AMD will make smart design choices as they move forward.

[Danny3]

Open source firmware, that would be great!

[duby229]

Raptor computers uses OpenBMC on their Talos open hardware systems, so this is good that AMD is moving in this direction. You could ultimately have libre AMD systems again.

However, OpenBMC on Talos has been criticized as being very slow, taking "over two minutes to get from turning on the power strip to a Fedora login and almost a full minute of that just to get the ability to start main power" (https://www.talospace.com/2019/11/be...-bring-up.html). Also, OpenBMC utilizes systemd and dbus, which is a very questionable direction for an embedded system and may contribute to the extremely slow startup time. There are different versions of OpenBMC, with Facebook using a different setup than what Talos uses. Hopefully AMD will make smart design choices as they move forward.

Yeah, the Talos problem with OpenBMC is most likely due to huge amounts of context switching, basically waiting for IPC signals, flushing and refilling the CPU endlessly. There's tens of thousands of context switches happening.

[andre30correia]

I doubt this will happen in new hardware the motherboards vendors don't want this, they have little tricks in their bios and without lockdown intel can't launch new chipsets every year the people simple unlock the old ones to work

[Deetwenty]

Been seeing articles like this for years, but these projects never seem to trickle down to end user devices.

That is because Google, Facebook, et. al. want full control over their devices and also control over our devices, so they want opensource firmware for themselves to be able to do that but prefer closed source for consumer devices since with opensource firmware it will be easier for consumers to bypass their control

[doublez13]

That is because Google, Facebook, et. al. want full control over their devices and also control over our devices, so they want opensource firmware for themselves to be able to do that but prefer closed source for consumer devices since with opensource firmware it will be easier for consumers to bypass their control

Ehh I wouldn't say that they prefer closed source for consumer devices, just that they have little incentive to push openness. To be fair, Google is contributing a decent amount to Coreboot for Chromebooks.

[Deetwenty]

Ehh I wouldn't say that they prefer closed source for consumer devices, just that they have little incentive to push openness. To be fair, Google is contributing a decent amount to Coreboot for Chromebooks.

Might have put it a bit more cynical than what is actually happening in practice yes, but there is definitely an incentive to not have consumers to much control over their devices (see for example that putting a chromebook in development mode will make it impossible for the drive to be encrypted in the usual way (it is kinda understandable as an option in development mode but only as an option) there is no technical limitation it is just there to incentives normal people to keep their chromebook locked)