Coreboot Picks Up Support For CompuLab's Intense-PC

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Coreboot Picks Up Support For CompuLab's Intense-PC

If you have one of the industrial-grade Intense-PC computers manufactured by CompuLab, there is now mainline Coreboot support!..

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Coreboot-Intense-PC

[caligula]

"My fanless Intense-PC is still working great after five years and hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of Linux benchmarking on it by now."

OTOH, normal desktop workstation is powered for 8 to 10 hours per day, 1500 to 2000 hours per year, in companies. So 5 years equals up to 10000+ hours of use. Of course normal use isn't as demanding as benchmarking, but still. Not exactly something that can be used as a meter of durability.

[Michael]

"My fanless Intense-PC is still working great after five years and hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of Linux benchmarking on it by now."

OTOH, normal desktop workstation is powered for 8 to 10 hours per day, 1500 to 2000 hours per year, in companies. So 5 years equals up to 10000+ hours of use. Of course normal use isn't as demanding as benchmarking, but still. Not exactly something that can be used as a meter of durability.

Up until a few months back, that Intense-PC was going through a daily benchmarking tracker at 2~4 hours a day, so it has racked up in thousands of hours (really just haven't thought it through in detail). So perhaps not as much as a desktop workstation in pure length, but probably comparable in total load over lifetime.

[AsuMagic]

It's quite a shame that aside of chromebook, coreboot support is very limited. It looks like a very interesting project, but none of the hardware I own can run it.
Is there really any advantage for motherboard manufacturers to use other third party firmware than coreboot?

Anyway, it's cool that more hardware is being supported.

[AJenbo]

Is there really any advantage for motherboard manufacturers to use other third party firmware than coreboot?

Coreboot claims no liability. I think they would rather have a codebase that has a guaranty attached to it and that there devs are used to.

[starshipeleven]

Is there really any advantage for motherboard manufacturers to use other third party firmware than coreboot?

Usually no. Coreboot is pretty much only used in embedded/industrial systems, and the code for those boards rarely hits upstream because of Intel NDAs in bringup documentation and stuff.

Google's stuff is an exception to this.

EDIT: I mean as "default firmware", the firmware provided by the vendor, not as third party firmwar emade by the community.

[starshipeleven]

Coreboot claims no liability. I think they would rather have a codebase that has a guaranty attached to it and that there devs are used to.

I somewhat doubt that American Megatrends, Phoenix or Insyde can offer much better on the liabilty part.
Afaik companies using Coreboot pay Intel for support and sign NDAs with them.

[timofonic]

It's quite a shame that aside of chromebook, coreboot support is very limited. It looks like a very interesting project, but none of the hardware I own can run it.
Is there really any advantage for motherboard manufacturers to use other third party firmware than coreboot?

Anyway, it's cool that more hardware is being supported.

I agree. I would love more modern and diverse hardware to be supported. Hell, I would like to port Coreboot to my hardware the day I become a programmer!

I somewhat doubt that American Megatrends, Phoenix or Insyde can offer much better on the liabilty part.
Afaik companies using Coreboot pay Intel for support and sign NDAs with them.

Those BIOSs/firmwares/WTF are total crap and used in 99% computers, I agree totally. I hate the AMI BIOS/FW of my laptop with great passion, it's full of crap and has very very weird quirks too long to describe here.

I consider the "American Megatrends" a very funny name, really. WTF thought of that name? It seems silly to me.

The same about Phoenix and Insyde, WTF?