AMD PMF Firmware Added To Linux-Firmware.Git For Smart PC Solution Builder

As written about last month, AMD Linux engineers have been working on PMF Linux driver support for a "Smart PC Solutions Builder". The AMD Smart PC Solutions Builder feature is intended to provide OEMs with more control over system power/performance policies. It looks like systems making use of this feature are already to the marketplace or imminent with AMD having already landed the PMF firmware.

The Smart PC Solutions Builder feature is still being worked on for the mainline Linux kernel. It's possible we will see this feature land for the upcoming Linux 6.7 cycle. See the prior article for more background information on this Platform Management Framework (PMF) feature.

The news now though is that the PMF Smart PC Solution Builder firmware has already been added to linux-firmware.git as of last week. Even prior to getting this kernel feature upstream, the necessary firmware blob has been made public.

This commit adds the initial firmware:

"AMD PMF driver loads the PMF TA (Trusted Application) into the AMD ASP's (AMD Security Processor) TEE (Trusted Execution Environment).

PMF Trusted Application is a secured firmware placed under /lib/firmware/amdtee gets loaded only when the TEE environment is initialized. This Firmware adds the initial support for PMF Smart PC Solution Builder."

With the firmware already in linux-firmware.git, it's possible some OEMs are already employing this Smart PC Solution Builder feature. AMD tends to be not too proactive in publishing their firmware files early for unreleased hardware/features and the like, so it's possible the Smart PC Solution Builder is already used or going to be used for this generation of devices. In any event it will be interesting to see how this feature plays out for laptops and desktops with what kind of power/performance/thermal gains can be realized.