Intel Begins Adding Meteor Lake Support To Coreboot

Intel Meteor Lake as the successor to Raptor Lake has begun seeing Coreboot enablement work by Intel engineers.

Meteor Lake is the 2023 "14th Gen" Core processor family and debuting on the Intel 4 processor while also moving to a tiled architecture. Even going back to the end of 2020 we began seeing Linux patches for Meteor Lake and that early enablement work has continued.

Over the past year and so far this year have been multiple early "Meteor Lake" patches posted, mostly when it comes down to existing Linux drivers just needing new IDs added for Meteor Lake support. We expect more interesting Meteor Lake Linux patches to materialize later this year. Merged this week to the Coreboot open-source firmware project is initial Meteor Lake SoC support.

The initial Meteor Lake SoC support submitted by Intel is based on Coreboot's existing Alder Lake SoC code with various changes needed for these 14th Gen Core CPUs. No major revelations though about Meteor Lake's features as part of this initial Coreboot code.

For open-source fans, Intel's FSP (Firmware Support Package) is still around for Meteor Lake. Many open-source firmware developers are currently petitioning Intel to open-source the FSP or make other improvements for greater open compatibility, but we'll see if by rare chance that leads to any shifts moving forward.

Those wanting to see the initial Meteor Lake enablement work for Coreboot can see this commit. As is usually the case, Intel engineers normally bring-up the Coreboot support for new CPUs/SoCs early in Coreboot to help out Chromebook design wins with Google requiring Coreboot support. So with most newer SoCs most of the Coreboot support is limited to reference motherboards and any relevant Chromebooks. At least in the case of Alder Lake, there is an ongoing port to an interesting consumer retail (MSI) motherboard and hopefully we'll see more of that moving forward.