Am 08.01.2014 06:16, schrieb ron minnich:
As an experiment I've started a page linked from the top I'm calling the Blob Matrix. It's partly because the discussion got a little confusing for me about blobs, and partly because it's not always clear, moving from one system to another, that you're really reducing your blob count.
I'm a bit confused on the scope of that page.
I don't know for sure if the X60 comes with Intel AMT firmware or not, but I've never seen a Management Engine on i945/ICH7. Also, what's the "BIOS" bit supposed to mean?
ACPI and SMM aren't exactly blobs, at least not more than all vendor BIOS bits. On coreboot they're neatly contained.
The ME blob on Pixel is mentioned "replacable, signed", which is physically true, but still meaningless because of the "signed" bit. On the other hand MRC is "not practically replaceable" even though "all" it takes is reverse engineering similar to the effort for the nehalem support for x201.
As far as I can see, there are four different aspects intermingled right now:
1. What is shipping by default (eg. BIOS, ACPI, SMM) 2. Where might nastygrams hide on your device (eg. ACPI, SMM) 3. What can be replaced physically (ME firmware, but not BL0) 4. What can be replaced logically (MRC and VGA BIOS can, with tons of effort, ME firmware can't)
Which one are you aiming for?
Regards, Patrick
Happy new year.
I like the blob matrix idea!
Patrick Georgi wrote:
I don't know for sure if the X60 comes with Intel AMT firmware or not, but I've never seen a Management Engine on i945/ICH7.
The discrete Intel 82573E PCIe NIC can have AMT firmware but on the X60 there's an 1kbit EEPROM connected to the NIC's SPI memory interface rather than the flash chip option.
ACPI and SMM aren't exactly blobs, at least not more than all vendor BIOS bits. On coreboot they're neatly contained.
Neither ACPI tables nor SMM handlers are ever blobs and it would be misleading to describe them as such. We must not do that in anything we have on the web.
//Peter
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Patrick Georgi -
Peter Stuge