Intel Working On Coreboot Support For Xeon 6 Platforms

Intel announced earlier this week ahead of the OCP Global Summit that they have partnered with the 9elements consulting firm for getting Coreboot up and running on Intel Xeon 6 "Granite Rapids" platforms.

This isn't really surprising at all as for many generations now we've seen Intel contributing to Coreboot from their reference server platforms to client side platforms too (largely there as it pertains to Chromebooks). On Phoronix I've been covering Intel's extensive contributions to Coreboot for years and this is continuing for Xeon 6 in partnership with 9elements.

Before getting too excited though, the Intel Firmware Support Package (FSP) as a binary element is still required as part of the open-source Coreboot stack. Additionally, their motherboard focus is on their Avenue City and Beechnut City reference boards. Outside of Intel's reference boards, it's typically only the custom board designs for hyperscalers like Meta and as part of that the Open Compute Project that end up seeing any near-term support. We've love to see more server motherboards in the retail channel ship with Coreboot as an option but alas so far that's been elusive aside from long-obsolete Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron (yes, Opteron) motherboards from third-party vendors years later.

Intel wrote in their announcement this week around Xeon 6 Coreboot support:

"Intel is doubling down on its commitment to open platforms and collaboration, and coreboot is a prime example of this.
...
With the introduction of Xeon-6 coreboot, we’re excited to open the doors for evaluation. We invite OEMs, partners, and developers to join us in building a future where open-source firmware enables innovation and scalability. Let’s shape an open, secure ecosystem—together."

Back when I was in Oregon last month for Intel's Enterprise Tech Tour in speaking with executives then, they commented they continue to see much interest in open-source at the firmware level among the major organizations. Interest there is only growing so expect to see even more on this front coming up.

AMD as well for their part also is actively engaging in Coreboot support as well as their exciting openSIL effort for open-source CPU silicon initialization.