Open-Source Coreboot Port Working On A Retail Intel Alder Lake MSI Motherboard

[davidhendricks]

But are these boards actually obtainable by the general public at reasonable prices (comparable to random AsrockRack or Supermicro boards)? Or are they in the "contact us for a quote" category and pricing ("if you have to ask, then you can't afford it")?

The Xeon-D based OCP boards that I mentioned are generally geared at large companies that purchase them by the rack, as well as top-of-rack switches.

For something a bit more "off-the-shelf", you might look toward the Supermicro X11SSH boards that 9elements has been working on:
Kabylake-DT: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...erver-Coreboot
Coffee Lake: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...L-Supermicro-B

[DanaG]

coreboot works well on Xeon-D and is maintained on the 4.11 branch: https://review.coreboot.org/plugins/...ds/4.11_branch

Intel Camelback Mountain is the reference board: https://review.coreboot.org/plugins/...kmountain_fsp/

The OCP (Open Compute Project) Mono Lake and Wedge100S targets are based on it and add a few features such as TXT and measured boot: https://review.coreboot.org/plugins/...mainboard/ocp/

But are these boards actually obtainable by the general public at reasonable prices (comparable to random AsrockRack or Supermicro boards)? Or are they in the "contact us for a quote" category and pricing ("if you have to ask, then you can't afford it")?

[upsala]

For me, mainboards with smaller form-factors and ECC RAM support are more interesting.

Still I would support this!

[leo1981]

Starlabs announced 2 AMD computers with coreboot. Release date was not announced.
Hopefully this is a trend, more coreboot in modern hardware.

[davidhendricks]

I'd love to have CoreBoot in a modern low-power server board (Xeon D or such).

coreboot works well on Xeon-D and is maintained on the 4.11 branch: https://review.coreboot.org/plugins/...ds/4.11_branch

Intel Camelback Mountain is the reference board: https://review.coreboot.org/plugins/...kmountain_fsp/

The OCP (Open Compute Project) Mono Lake and Wedge100S targets are based on it and add a few features such as TXT and measured boot: https://review.coreboot.org/plugins/...mainboard/ocp/

[pietrushnic]

Thank you for comments NM64 and DanaG .

From my perspective this show that there is a lot of value to deliver because of poorly tested and developed vendor firmware. Existing firmware supply chain is broken and many people working in this ecosystem for years do not see need or potential for change.

Unfortunately, based on individual cases it is hard to build business model. Engineering time even in cases that at surface looks trivial is still expensive and driving high-risk business like embedded firmware development may not add up. That's why I think ecosystem requires new business models for firmware development. More to that above cases, if by any chance would be addressed by open-source firmware in the future, could be used as success stories. We require those stories to convince vendors that open-source firmware bring value.

[DanaG]

I'd love to have CoreBoot in a modern low-power server board (Xeon D or such). I have an Asrock X570D4U-2L2T, and the firmware is kinda garbage: the IPMI shared interface drops connection during reboot, and the web UI lacks any options for serial-over-lan, and the BIOS doesn't allow ANY sort of suspend states. Also, it doesn't give very good control of the EFI framebuffer, and the BMC is artificially limited to 1024x768 and no EDID, unlike my previous board that would pass through a VGA monitor's EDID.

I realized I don't really need that much horsepower in my server machine, so something low-power with ECC would be best, but I'd still want something with at least one 10-gigabit ethernet to play with. The closest I've seen was a CoreBoot port for an Asrock Haswell board, but it had something about "no guarantees about ECC actually working" on it, and it stated that there was no fan control.

I'd also have to figure out what to do with that X570D4U-2L2T and the Ryzen 3700X in it. If I'd known the problems, I wouldn't have bought that board. I could sell it, but dunno who'd buy it.

[NM64]

Anyway, thank you for insightful post a lot of appealing points.

While I'm here I might as well quickly mention two possibly less important, unrelated, and/or not-applicable things.

1. On the subject of locked-down devices, I've come into possession of a OneXPlayer equipped with a Ryzen 4800U and, bloody nora, I think it may have the most locked-down BIOS that I've ever seen - I can change the time, boot device order, quiet boot/splash screen, and I honestly think that's it which is unfortunate because the fan curve is WAAAAAAAY too aggressive, and the minimum fan speed it wants to run at is still way too loud for me despite temps only being in the 50s (I can hear it from the other side of a closed door ~2 meters away). I have an older HP DM1 laptop that's similar but isn't quite as loud, as well as an Asus EeePC 1000H that could run its first-gen Intel Atom completely passively and would max out at only ~85c, but this requires OS-level fan control software as the BIOS of course contains no options for that, not to mention the fan is also very loud and overly-aggressive (and I'm not even sure it does much of anything due to having no intake?)

2. SSD firmware; speaking of Framework, I find it a bit ironic that they use Western Digital SSDs when Western Digital only provides SSD firmware updates via a Windows EXE. Also I had the "joy" of experiencing Crucial's "power-loss protection" on a 480GB M500 and 512GB M550 where, if it detects poor power delivery or other issues with the power source, it'll permanently lock the drive into a read-only state, and yes it's completely permanent AFAIK despite a secure erase actually still functioning correctly (I even bit the bullet and contacted Crucial support, but alas they said there was nothing I could do). Interestingly I had an older 256GB Crucial M4 which predates this "power-loss protection" and, when it too ran into a situation of insufficient power, it initially seemed like it died but, after leaving the M4 plugged to only power for around an hour, unplugging it, then plugging it back in, the drive "just worked".

[Termy]

It's very unfortunate that AMD doesn't see it as a chance to differentiate themselves from other vendors (intel) by being more open.

They "promised" to open up the Firmware and PSP years ago and i still haven't heard of one tiny step in that direction - kind of disappointing given their good track record on the GPU-side :/

[mazumoto]

mazumoto unfortunately AMD is not easy to play with, we're trying hard, but let's be honest for now Intel has better ecosystem for open-source firmware development. This may be because AMD is in rush, and they are terribly understaffed in all areas in comparison to success they achieved. We're doing AMD open-source firmware development for 6+ years, including our yearly reports of open-source firmware status at FOSDEM, but level of support for small volume firmware developing company is not yet at level of competition.

Thanks a lot for the insight, I really appreciate it!
It's very unfortunate that AMD doesn't see it as a chance to differentiate themselves from other vendors (intel) by being more open. And their AGESA problems (USB connectivity, WHEA errors, etc. - for years) don't make them look very competent in developing firmware.