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  • #11
    Originally posted by tg-- View Post
    Then in 2014, AMD decided they no longer cared about Coreboot, they had moved on to UEFI and this was good enough for their embedded customers.
    So they simply stopped releasing public AGESA blobs, fired their subcontractor (which had to lay off a lot of staff), and since then, no AMD system has been supported by Coreboot.
    1. Why can't coreboot be implemented as UEFI compliant firmware? Or it's avoiding it by design? I get the point why AMD might want to be UEFI compliant. If Coreboot can't handle that - it's not an option for them. Though it shouldn't really force them to explicitly block it somehow.
    2. Why can't AMD use some open source variant of UEFI?

    MS were recently working on something related. Can it help AMD case?

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    • #12
      Originally posted by shmerl View Post

      1. Why can't coreboot be implemented as UEFI compliant firmware? Or it's avoiding it by design? I get the point why AMD might want to be UEFI compliant. If Coreboot can't handle that - it's not an option for them. Though it shouldn't really force them to explicitly block it somehow.
      2. Why can't AMD use some open source variant of UEFI?

      MS were recently working on something related. Can it help AMD case?
      First, we have to understand what UEFI actually is.
      UEFI essentially is a protocol description of an early-boot operating system firmware and its interfaces.
      Those can be implemented as open source and even loaded by Coreboot, but UEFI in itself neither includes what Coreboot includes, nor are they interchangable.

      Coreboot does early platform initialization, which is not covered by UEFI in itself.
      UEFI without platform initialization is available in an open source implementation by Intel, called Tianocore, and can be - and often is - used together with Coreboot, which does the nitty gritty hardware stuff required beforehand.

      The actual issue here thus is not UEFI, the issue is that vendors nowadays don't publicly document early boot behavior anymore, making it hard to get Coreboot running; instead they stuff it in their own proprietary UEFI BIOSs as a binary blob so not even the BIOS vendors can do their own platform initialization.
      AMD has had this for a long time and calls it AGESA, Intel came later and calls it FSP.

      As you can see, the reason for lacking AMD support by Coreboot is AGESA; and in the same way, FSP introduces the same issues for Intel, which is why the 8th gen platforms can't be supported right now.

      The MS thing doesn't change anything. As far as I can recall, they just switched from an entirely proprietary UEFI implementation to a Tianocore based implementation, so the UEFI part is based on a open source project (since its not GPL that's just going to benefit Microsoft themselves not anyone else).
      The platform initialization will still be based on a mix of proprietary firmware from a classical vendor, together with generic proprietary platform initialization by the platform vendor (Intel, or possibly AMD).
      Last edited by tg--; 14 January 2019, 01:46 PM.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by tg-- View Post

        The actual issue here thus is not UEFI, the issue is that vendors nowadays don't publicly document early boot behavior anymore, making it hard to get Coreboot running; instead they stuff it in their own proprietary UEFI BIOSs as a binary blob so not even the BIOS vendors can do their own platform initialization.
        AMD has had this for a long time and calls it AGESA, Intel came later and calls it FSP.
        So why can't AMD for example open source AGESA?

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        • #14
          Originally posted by shmerl View Post
          Still no AMD options though?
          Exactly what I tough..
          AMD used to be supported by Coreboot in the past..

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          • #15
            Originally posted by shmerl View Post

            So why can't AMD for example open source AGESA?
            Well, they could.
            But they don't wanna.

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            • #16
              Originally posted by tg-- View Post
              The actual issue here thus is not UEFI, the issue is that vendors nowadays don't publicly document early boot behavior anymore, making it hard to get Coreboot running; instead they stuff it in their own proprietary UEFI BIOSs as a binary blob so not even the BIOS vendors can do their own platform initialization.
              AMD has had this for a long time and calls it AGESA, Intel came later and calls it FSP.
              Couldn't Coreboot just somehow integrate AGESA into their builds? They do it with FSP.

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              • #17
                Originally posted by Espionage724 View Post

                Couldn't Coreboot just somehow integrate AGESA into their builds? They do it with FSP.
                That wouldn't be open though, so it defeats the point at least for Purism.

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by shmerl View Post

                  That wouldn't be open though, so it defeats the point at least for Purism.
                  But doesn't Purism already take shortcuts to that regard with Intel ME? As I understand, they still ship laptops with it, but they rely on the HAP bit to "disable" it.

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                  • #19
                    There are AMD Chromebooks on the way, based on Piledriver architecture I think. So maybe it is a start of something new.

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                    • #20
                      I just replaced ChromeOS on my Chromebox (Haswell era) with Coreboot and it works great. Linux, Win10, doesn't matter, they all work.

                      So I agree, once those AMD Chromebooks arrive, the door may be opened.

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