Linux Kernel Continues Prepping For RISC-V's Updated Supervisor Binary Interface

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Kernel Continues Prepping For RISC-V's Updated Supervisor Binary Interface

RISC-V's Supervisor Binary Interface "SBI" is the interface between the platform-specific firmware and the running operating system or hypervisor for interacting with the supervisor execution environment in the higher privileged mode. The Linux kernel has been working to support a newer version of the SBI that is more extensible moving forward...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RISC-V-Linux-SBI-v0.2-Continues

[FireBurn]

What are harts?

[andrei_me]

What are harts?

I didn't know too, so according to google:

hart is a hardware thread

[Cape]

Mmm... I'm no expert, but this thing sounds like the Risc-V version of Intel IME.

Are they baking the NSA backdoor right into the kernel?

[brouhaha]

Mmm... I'm no expert, but this thing sounds like the Risc-V version of Intel IME.

Are they baking the NSA backdoor right into the kernel?

AFAICT, it's more like ACPI.

There's nothing that prevents a RISC-V platform from implementing super-sekrit back doors just like Intel ME and AMD PSP, but this isn't it. We need to vote with our wallets and not buy processors or SoCs known to contain that kind of crap. Unfortunately for x86 that war seems to already be lost, but there's still a chance for RISC-V.

There's nothing that prevents a RISC-V platform from having a closed-source "BIOS" containing ugly stuff like SMM, just like an x86 BIOS or UEFI. Again, we need to vote with our wallets.