A Dream Come True: Running Coreboot On A Modern, Retail Desktop Motherboard

[pietrushnic]

I presume most advanced features of the original ROM are lost, including intelligent fan management, wake on LAN, SMART monitoring, etc.

No, those features are not lost. There are Dasharo based devices on the market that work with Wake On Lan and Fan Management. For now, we test basic set of features. Test results can be found here, but would be glad to extend that list of features including one you mentioned. Unfortunately we are 24 employees company at the moment, where MSI has over 2500 employees. There is quite a difference between capabilities we have and major players. Considering that, as CEO, I have to say we have great team achieving wonderful results assuming resources we have.

If adding above features will make this platform better we will try to find resource to make it happen.

Oh, and I'm almost sure Secure Boot doesn't work with this ROM either.

Not only UEFI Secure Boot works, but also Measured Boot and Verified Boot. Please check test results.

Still a nice achievement considering in the past this ROM supported only 10 year old motherboards.

Thank you, despite open-source firmware for quite some time supports modern hardware - e.g. NovaCustom laptops, Protectli firewalls, all Chromebooks.

[pietrushnic]

As happy as I am for the "current-gen coreboot motherboard", it's still slightly crippled (X.M.P, power management and CPU clock speeds) and dependent on binary blobs. Just like AOSP vs. Android (crippled camera firmware, buggy OLED driver logic, buggy wifi etc.)

direc85 yes, and without your support and help not much will change. Simple marketing support may increase open-source firmware visibility, which will lead to more interest from customers. If customer start demand open-source firmware, then market will slowly shift in that direction. More import of course is for open-source firmware project to be attractive, what is not so easy considering massive advantage that existing entities have because of their position in computer industry supply chain.

I tried to explain need for changed in firmware environment multiple times on this forum. For example, you can check this post.

What I wonder is what we should do to make you more enthusiastic? Can I get back to you if we fix performance, XMP, would that help?

[pietrushnic]

Seeing as motherboard brands differ quite a bit in the interpretation of Intel guidelines, even lower end models of the same manufacturers have slightly toned down clocks (Hardware Unboxed made a video on it).
So at least it can be configured by the manufacturer, if not completely controlled by the BIOS.

JacekJagosz again thanks for this comment. That's the point we follow guidelines and JEDEC specs, apparently vendors not just to squeeze more from hardware. We consider providing performance profiles which would the same or even more. Depending on support we will get it would be available to all or just supporters (testers, Patreons, buyers who decided to pay little more buying from our shop, so we can drive Dasharo support further).

[pietrushnic]

Just curious if anyone reading knows, how different is one motherboards bios from another? Like lets say three scenarios:
1) Would the DDR5 version of this same board require an entirely separate port or would it just be some tweaks to the existing code?

This question was answered in Dasharo FAQ

2) Would another MSI board targeting this platform have enough similar bits or would that be a separate port?

I'm not sure if I understand that question. What do you mean by platform?
Key thing to consider is, if we're talking about the same Intel microarchitecture, then if we're talking about the same chipset. If both answers are yes, then majority of the work should be done, but YMMV depending on PCB (mainboard) design.

3) Same basic question for another company's board targeting the same platform?

Again, I'm not sure what platform means here. Is there any specific board that you would like to see supported by Dasharo open-source firmware distribution?

I know nothing really about this stuff I'm just curious where the point of being a totally new port process starts vs just needing to tweak some of the existing code for the slightly different modules.

It really depends. Please note coding is just part of equation. There are always lawyers to be paid, accounting, company infrastructure, labs, validation etc. Without that it's just playing in the garage and results maybe different depending on motivation. As I mentioned whole port was just 6k lines of code - this is not a lot, but writing code is one thing and delivering things to end users is another, not very close, thing.

[pietrushnic]

I would pay a premium for a version of this board that was preflashed with Coreboot. Although the D16 running Libreboot is still top of my wishlist for x86 which is under the Talos II.

We will sell it. Right now it is on backorder, but we should start soon. Please visit our shop: mainboard and full PC build.

[pietrushnic]

That's an impressive accomplishment.

Is the rest of the motherboard functional? Slots, ports, WiFi, onboard sound and such?

Thank you. Please check test results.

[pietrushnic]

Thank you for this, I've been dreaming about this happening for so long, always thought it wouldn't happen. It's an insta buy from me if they support 13th gen

Barley9432 thank you. It should be possible with your support. We already considered that. Key question would be to Intel about Firmware Support Package when it would be available and if we will have enough resources to support new CPU.

[pietrushnic]

I believe this explanation of performance numbers from our Magician miczyg is quite good.

Also, we would like you to vote on Dasharo compatible with MSI PRO Z690-A WIFI DDR features here. Some of the features requested here are already considered, so please check our list.

[mahurinj]

This question was answered in Dasharo FAQ



I'm not sure if I understand that question. What do you mean by platform?
Key thing to consider is, if we're talking about the same Intel microarchitecture, then if we're talking about the same chipset. If both answers are yes, then majority of the work should be done, but YMMV depending on PCB (mainboard) design.



Again, I'm not sure what platform means here. Is there any specific board that you would like to see supported by Dasharo open-source firmware distribution?



It really depends. Please note coding is just part of equation. There are always lawyers to be paid, accounting, company infrastructure, labs, validation etc. Without that it's just playing in the garage and results maybe different depending on motivation. As I mentioned whole port was just 6k lines of code - this is not a lot, but writing code is one thing and delivering things to end users is another, not very close, thing.

Sorry by platform I meant chipset. Very interesting that coding is seemingly less the obstacle than legal and logistical issues but I guess that makes sense in hindsight. Is there a reason modern Intel gets more coreboot attention than AMD? I would love to see an AM4 or AM5 board ported.

[zir_blazer]

Currently testing with a 12600K with no dGPU. It can install Windows 11 with no issues (Secure Boot + fTPM).

https://imgur.com/a/nVBxjkp

The performance difference is rather simple to explain: Dasharo is using Intel specified power limits. PL1 and PL2 are 125W/150W, respectively. When using MSI stock Firmware, loading default options put it in Water Cooling mode (I don't know if with non-K like Phoronix 12400 it works the same way).

Boxed Cooler PL1 241W PL2 241W Current Limit 280A
Tower Air Cooler PL1 288W PL2 288W Current Limit 512A
Water Cooler PL1 4096W PL2 4096W Current Limit 512A

So by default, your Power Limiters are essencially unlimited. And even the lowest Boxed Cooler option would put it at 241W/241W - you would need to manually input 125W/150W to make the comparison fair. That is part of the set of tricks that is used to cheat in Motherboard performance differences, whereas Dasharo is plain, dull, stock.
TechPowerUp reviewed a 12900K with different Power Limiters and the difference between 125W/241W vs 241W/241W was around 8%, which would be around the performance deficit I see in the 12600K.

There are certain features which after confirming with 3mdeb I know that are or aren't enabled:

Resizeable Bar is theorically supported but not enabled because they don't have any compatible card in the lab to actually test it.
HPET is supposedly disabled by default, but I didn't checked this one myself.
There seems to be a featured called TME (Total Memory Encryption) that is partially enabled, but seems misconfigured. It is supposed to carry a performance penalty if actually using, and for comparison, it is disabled on MSI stock Firmware:

x86/tme: enabled by BIOS
x86/tme: Unknown policy is active: 0x2
x86/mktme: No known encryption algorithm is supported: 0x4
x86/mktme: enabled by BIOS
x86/mktme: 15 KeyIDs available

I tested DPC Latency on Dasharo with Latencymon but didn't compared it to stock Firmware. And it is rather hard to test consistently. On idle, it seems to hovers from 10-30 Microseconds.

There is something really off about certain POST/boot times. I used a USB Flash Drive made with Ventoy to have multiple ISOs on it, and there is a strange 10-15 seconds delay from loading Ventoy Boot Loader before getting Arch Linux or Ubuntu one. This is instant on MSI stock Firmware. Phoronix also reports a Systemd Total Boot Time (Test: Kernel) that is more than two times slower than MSI stock. That is literally THE only obscene bug I found, the other one is where the POST slowed down to a 5x slower crawl after a warm reset while booting W11 install ISO which I didn't tried to reproduce, but fixed after a power cycle.