Coreboot Finally Sees Zen/Ryzen Support In The Form Of Picasso APU Enablement

The Coreboot open-source firmware/BIOS project has finally seen initial AMD Zen CPU support as part of Google engineers bringing up Picasso APU support in order to handle an upcoming Chromebook launch.

The most recent AMD CPUs to be supported by Coreboot has been Stoney Ridge, the APUs with GCN graphics and two Excavator cores. That support was done by Google engineers on the Chromebook front with AMD themselves being out of the Coreboot game / open-source AGESA coverage for several years now. But coming in as bit of a surprise today was initial Zen APU / Picasso coverage.

This isn't a total surprise since Google remains committed to using Coreboot support for their Chrome OS powered devices and for a while now there has been rumors of "Zork" as an AMD Picasso Chromebook.

Picasso are AMD mobile/desktop APUs with Zen+ processor cores and Vega graphics while being the successor to Raven Ridge. Picasso includes the likes of the Ryzen 5 3500U/3550H, Ryzen PRO 3700U, and other models with up to four cores / eight threads and a range of graphics from Vega 3 on the low-end up to Vega 10.

Merged today into Coreboot Git is the initial Picasso support for the APU itself while the motherboard coverage is another story. This Picasso/Zen support started off based on Coreboot's Stoney Ridge port and updated with the necessary Zen/Picasso changes.

It's interesting to see this Picasso support though sadly it seems unlikely we'll see many (or any timely?) AMD motherboards see support for Coreboot, but I'll follow up with my AMD contacts as their next-gen launches near to see if the outlook of Coreboot support on the desktop/server front has shifted at all.