"Project X" - Pure Open-Source Coreboot Support On AMD Zen

[klapaucius]

Would this mean having the ability to minimize/disable PSP too?

Oh, by the way, this is the only Project X I know:

I'm gonna launch my UAE right now...

[sdack]

While I'm a long-time C/C++ developer with little love for Rust, would my key interest in this be how much faster a machine is able to boot under Project X. If Project X manages to get faster boot times then this would be great, but any slower than it already is would not interest me. I rather keep the closed-source, proprietary BIOS blobs over any free, open-source Rust-based but slow code. So I'm hoping it allows for significantly faster boot times.

[microcode]

Very very cool.

[zexelon]

It would be a huge gamechanger if amd could be booted blob-free.
Right now x86 systems need to be pre-2008 (intel) or pre 2012 (amd); and modded, in order to respect your privacy.
Amd is playing nice with AMDGPU, hope to see a future where they support open source firmware.

Wile the coolness factor of this project is up there for sure, it really is not a "game changer." For the few people who are zealous about knowing the prime directive of every bit and byte flowing through their system, yes this would be handy... for the rest of the 99.97% of the world, the computer will still just turn on and run.

[ping-wu]

Will AMD's merger with Xilinx (re FPGA technology) have any impact on this Zen chip coreboot development?

[shmerl]

How would it work in practice? Replacing motherboard UEFI with open source version? Would it require knowing the specifics of each motherboard?

[tildearrow]

Wile the coolness factor of this project is up there for sure, it really is not a "game changer." For the few people who are zealous about knowing the prime directive of every bit and byte flowing through their system, yes this would be handy... for the rest of the 99.97% of the world, the computer will still just turn on and run.

Paranoia increases as big companies' data collection practices (e.g. Microsoft and Google) get worse.

[commodore256]

I wonder if I could get a blob-free Ryzen 5000, I could get better performance than my x4500HD just by using LLVM Pipe. My GPU performs in Crysis in Wine about as well as I expect it to run with the same hardware on Windows XP. If it's about the same, it would at east be more versatile and run OpenGL 4.5 and be better for modern low end games, stuff that's made to use DX11 but because low end Windows 7 is the baseline and it would be a Gamemaker or RPG maker game. RPG MV Games run pretty slow on my GPU because my GPU is to old to support newer APIs natively, so it emulates newer OpenGL calls via LLVM Pipe on a Core2 Quad. Really bad for precision timing elements in some RPG games. But if I had a CPU 12 years newer, it would help with that.

[cb88]

Will AMD's merger with Xilinx (re FPGA technology) have any impact on this Zen chip coreboot development?

No, and Xilinx is one of the most proprietary companies there is.

[Nichiren]

Personally I'd take Coreboot even with the blobs (AGESA and whatnot) if it would just enable me to chuck the fucking UEFI bloat somewhere it belongs. My Ryzen system boot takes something like 25 seconds, of which UEFI is around 20 and even has the 3 second systemd-boot menu delay on top of it. Doing away with the blobs would be just extra gravy.