[coreboot] building a coreboot (and 100% free software) compatible box

"Kristóf, Csillag" csillag.kristof at gmail.com
Thu Feb 7 10:17:28 CET 2013


At 2013-02-07 10:02, Rudolf Marek wrote:
>>> 1.1. It must be able to run 100% free software. No closed BIOS. No 
>>> binary
>>> firmware loaded to any part of the system with meaningful access to my
>>> data. (CPU, GPU, network card, etc.)
>
> Firmwares on latest AMD APUs:
>
> 1) NB firmware - most likely needed for PCIe - never tried without
> 2) SB firmware - IMC - you dont need to load this
> 3) XHCI - you dont need to  load this - no USB3.0
> 4) CPU microcode - you will have problems if you don't load this (need 
> to check)
> 5) ATOM tables - you can interpret them via kernel driver
> 6) GPU firmware - no GPU and no modesetting
Sounds just great. Any pointers where can I look into these?

>> You lose.
> Yes you do.
Not ready to give up yet.

> But what about IOMMU? You could authorize DMA accesses but not sure if 
> this shields SB stuff.
>
> Also, why the backdoor would be in FW when it could be directly in the HW?
It sounds hard to implement complicated, adaptive logic, involving 
multiple system components, purely in HW.
And there are not too much hardware components that have the access 
required to do this.
But yes, it's a real problem...

> You will never know, except if you build your own system on FPGA....
Are you aware of any viable designs to do this?

Thanks:

         Csillag




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