AMD openSIL Detailed For Advancing Open-Source System Firmware

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Details openSIL For Advancing Open-Source System Firmware

Open-source fans, rejoice, the most exciting thing I have read all week or perhaps the month: "AMD is committed to open-source software and is now expanding into the various firmware domains with the re-architecture of its x86 AGESA FW stack - designed with UEFI as the host firmware that prevented scaling, to other host firmware solutions such as coreboot, oreboot, FortiBIOS, Project Mu and others. A newer, open architecture that potentially allows for reduced attack surface, and perceivably infinite scalability is now available as a Proof-of-Concept, within the open-source community for evaluation, called the AMD openSIL – Open-Source Silicon Initialization Library."..

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-openSIL-Detailed

[Finity]

How does this affect the prevalence of CPU microcode? I hope—beyond opening up system firmware—it will help eliminate binary blobs elsewhere, thus advance FSF libre aspirations.

[NeoMorpheus]

Nvdroids: i dont care, give me closed source goodness that only Dear Leader Jensen provides!

That out of the way, this is indeed great news for the FOSS community.

[deusexmachina]

How does this relate to disabling or minimizing the most serious black box in the AMD CPU: the PSP?

[andrei_me]

Little bit off-topic but nice to see they citing oreboot, the rust version of coreboot 😋

[Sethox]

How does this relate to disabling or minimizing the most serious black box in the AMD CPU: the PSP?

Well the first step is to open source the firmware, then the transition for the community to have a look and oversee the code (for future changes). It could end up abolishing and/or improving AMD PSP. But the code will tell the interested first and foremost, I doubt AMD PSP is getting open sourced but the near future looks less grim for the open source bandwagon.

Little bit off-topic but nice to see they citing oreboot, the rust version of coreboot 😋

And the analogy fits, after a while the metal oxidizes while the texture of the surface changes and then begins to spread.

[phoron]

It doesn't sound like they're opening the important blobs. It's just something to ease integrating different projects for the not-so-privileged code. The control will stay with the vendor, and it doesn't look like any future CPU design will allow owner control, without DRM, remote management or software enabled hardware features....
So thanks but no thanks, I'll stay so away from Intel and AMD as I can (and Nvidia too, and many ARM and RISC-V stuff, but not strictly all). It's almost Power9 or rk3399 only left. Ok, maybe something else, depending on what one needs...
I'm not saying this is anything bad. It must be better than what there was, but not in a way that matters to me.

[darkbasic]

So much talk, so few systems with open firmware

[yump]

What do they mean by "low chirp"? I know what a chirp is in signal processing, but I still don't understand. Search engines just get a bunch of results about sonar.

[paulocoghi]

So much talk, so few systems with open firmware

It's important to acknowledge that open firmware still has a ways to go, but AMD has been a valuable contributor to its development. While the current state of affairs is not without its flaws, it is much improved compared to previous iterations.

While it's understandable that companies prioritize financial gain, AMD's investment in open source is an admirable strategy. The company has a notable track record of producing high-quality FOSS projects and contributions, and this benefits everyone involved.