[coreboot] Removing microcode updates from blobs

mrnuke mr.nuke.me at gmail.com
Sat Dec 14 00:48:08 CET 2013


Hi all,

Following some recent discussions on IRC, we've see that some people
just don't like us shipping microcode in the main repository. OK,
microcode is a blob, so it belongs in blobs. Let's leave that at that.

Kyösti and I are working on making all CPUs update microcode from CBFS.
This is the first step in moving the microcode updates out of main. Our
branches are already up on gerrit:

Infrastructure (ready for review):
http://review.coreboot.org/#/q/status:open+project:coreboot+branch:master+topic:microcode-cbfs/infrastructure,n,z

Intel branch (ready for review):
http://review.coreboot.org/#/q/status:open+project:coreboot+branch:master+topic:microcode-cbfs,n,z

AMD branch (ready for review/needslove):
http://review.coreboot.org/#/q/status:open+project:coreboot+branch:master+topic:microcode-amd,n,z

I've also started integrating the microcode updates for Intel CPUs in
blobs. The branch is here (ready for review):
http://review.coreboot.org/#/q/status:open+project:blobs+branch:master+topic:microcode-deblob,n,z

Once ALL that is done, we can start removing those updates from master
(needslove):
http://review.coreboot.org/#/q/status:open+project:coreboot+branch:master+topic:microcode-deblob,n,z

This last branch is a WIP, but we should be able to have it build via
Jenkins once all the other Intel stuff is done.

And once ALL that is done, we'll be able to update Kconfig such that
microcode is only included automatically when the blobs repository is
enabled. This separation of blobs versus free code is only logical, and
the end result is more options for the user.

Reviews and testers highly appreciated. Let's get this done once and for
all. Remember, this is a multi-step process with changes that are, sadly
not trivial to keep track of.

Alex



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