Intel Working On Open-Sourcing The FSP - Would Be Huge Win For Coreboot & Security

[pal666]

It is a shame to hear about potentially the first 16 core consumer x86 chip for a reasonable price only to think "such a shame its an untrustable black box".

this is very stupid thought. hardware is closed, so no matter how open firmware will be, black box hardware will spy on you.

[zanny]

Next year is my bidecennial desktop upgrade. My last two systems were respectively an Intel 920 and 4770k.

The fact ME cleaner exists is the only thing keeping me even remotely interested in Intel products. If I can get coreboot support on whatever next years chips are going to be in a reasonable timeframe they will have saved themselves from an almost certain AMD purchase.

Of course, if AMD were to open source / document / enable alternative firmwares on any of its black box NSA back door hardware that would seal the deal for me as well. But given how they talked about disabling the PSP before backing out and how little interest / participation they have had with Coreboot since Ryzen came out I'm not holding my breath. It is a shame to hear about potentially the first 16 core consumer x86 chip for a reasonable price only to think "such a shame its an untrustable black box". Makes me feel like upgrading from a ME cleaned Haswell chip is a downgrade in freedom.

[CrystalGamma]

Forgive my ignorance, I'm working from memory and little knowledge. Is ME where the instance of Minix is running?

Assuming they're still using Minix, yes.

[kaprikawn]

Forgive my ignorance, I'm working from memory and little knowledge. Is ME where the instance of Minix is running?

[pgeorgi]

Would an open source FSP allow core/libreboot developers to create firmware that initializes the processor without turning on the ME?

Given that the ME decides when to take the CPU (that later runs FSP) out of reset: No.

[Pepec9124]

I like how people in this thread mix up FSP with PSP and ME.

[wizard69]

Great news, this pleases me very much to hear!
I surely hope that AMD matches that commitment and does the same!

I currently own a Intel 4770K "Haswell" and have been disappointed by Intel because there have been very little progress over the generations. Kaby Lake, Kaby Lake Refresh, Coffee Lake, etc, its all just been very boring. Also the Spectre/Meltdown vulnerabilities have been a disenchanting mess.

At the same time, AMD have been introducing the Ryzen and Ryzen 2 which are very interesting. So AMD looks very promising.
Which have lead me into thinking that my next system will be one based on AMD. However, if Intel open sources their FSP then I will probably stay with Intel. Especially if AMD doesn't open source their FSP and if there will be better support for coreboot from Intel.

Go AMD for finally having competitive processors. Frankly I see competition, good strong competition, as far more important than open FSP. The last thing we need to see is a return to AMD running at half speed. That will leave us with another half dozen years of no innovation out of Intel.

The lack of innovation, especially performance and new tech, in the PC space; scares me far more than any theoretical security risk.

[microcode]

That's a good step if true. After that, ME becomes the last stumbling block; it'd probably be enough if they provided enough code to replicate a base ME image (even if, at the end of the day, they don't want to provide a signing mechanism for third-party ME images).

[tildearrow]

Does this mean Purism's FSP article can be re-published?

[Cape]

They probably found a way to sneak the NSA backdoor somewhere else.