AMD Next Horizon: Zen 2, 7nm Vega, AMD On Amazon EC2

[darkbasic]

AMD doesn't make motherboards. We provide platforms which customers use to create motherboards. We provided coreboot support for a lot of AMD platforms in the past. Some company could have built a motherboard and used coreboot rather than a proprietary bios or someone could have ported coreboot to a particular motherboard for a supported platform. No one did that I am aware of. There were some embedded systems that wanted it and that is why we contributed support in the first place, but beyond that, there was not much interest from anyone at a large scale commercial level. At some point the cost didn't justify the effort.

As to the cost, it's software, there is a cost associated with it. Beyond IP and legal review, you have to integrate it into the coreboot framework and provide reasonable deliverables that are consumable by the project you are contributing to.

I understand it from a developer point of view, but I must repeat the it doesn't prove anything regarding coreboot public interest. It just proves how myope motherboard manufacters were. BIOS is still the biggest source of trouble in almost all my PCs (including servers) and I would be willing to pay a plus to get rid of it (I'm not even talking about security, that's a completely different matter and I would be willing to pay for that as well).

[madscientist159]

If there were enough interest we would probably consider it. As I said, we contributed to coreboot in the past because some companies making embedded boards wanted it. It's all about demand. It doesn't have to be a lot of demand, just enough to justify the investment. At the moment it's not there beyond a few vocal individuals as far as I know.

Working for an OEM selling systems with open firmware, I can assure you it's not just a few vocal individuals. People are literally migrating away from an entire ISA and its software ecosystem to get control of their desktops and servers back.

In any case, part of the reason you're seeing interest in coreboot drying up is directly because of your PSP -- there's no good reason to bother with coreboot when there's a signed, highly privileged, critical binary in the lowest levels of the system. Before we went to OpenPOWER (this is now many years ago) we tried reaching out a number of times over months to both AMD and the OEM we had been purchasing from -- AMD didn't respond, the OEM said, after directly asking AMD, that AMD wouldn't offer PSP-free SKUs. So here we are.

[dungeon]

In any case, part of the reason you're seeing interest in coreboot drying up is directly because of your PSP -- there's no good reason to bother with coreboot when there's a signed, highly privileged, critical binary in the lowest levels of the system.

Well, you still have AM1 Sempron APUs to buy new on Amazon/Newegg Even today it is not so much old platform just 4.5 years, blah, blah.

These does not have PSP, i think 2 AM1 mobos are coreboot compatible... but as agd5f said AMD does not make mobos, so just find them somewhere

At least 2 out of 9/10 mobos works with cb, one from Asus one from Biostar But why only 2 , why not all!! Well, there is no PSP there, so why not all?

And then... you know what


One mobo gets cb support one year later after launch:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=biostar-am1ml-coreboot-port

Second one only this year

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ASUS-AM1I-A-Coreboot

So, It is not cos of PSP, as these does not have PSP

[madscientist159]

At least 2 out of 9/10 mobos works with cb, one from Asus one from Biostar But why only 2 , why not all!! Well, there is no PSP there, so why not all?

As a coreboot developer, I have no interest in working on a dead (both obsolete and with no newer libre-friendly CPUs coming down the line) platform. It is likely other developers feel similarly.

[dungeon]

As a coreboot developer, I have no interest in working on a dead (both obsolete and with no newer libre-friendly CPUs coming down the line) platform. It is likely other developers feel similarly.

Well, It was not dead at the time, there you had it... there was 5 APUs for the platform, 10 mobos, no PSP, as cheap as possible, etc... but still nothing much happened

[madscientist159]

Well, It was not dead at the time, there you had it... there was 5 APUs for the platform, 10 mobos, no PSP, as cheap as possible, etc... but still nothing much happened

The PSP was introduced back in 2013, making AMD's intentions clear. AM1 came out in 2014...with a signed / locked SMU blob. The implementation was terrible and the key was hacked at some point (note the PSP does not contain that glaring hole) but that was years after release, and with the locked SMU again it was not an interesting target.

[dungeon]

The PSP was introduced back in 2013, making AMD's intentions clear. AM1 came out in 2014.

On actual products PSP started at Q2 2014 with second gen 16h, while AM1 is also 2014 for first gen 16h... the last of the mohicans