skylake support

[Neal Elliott]

Hello to all,

I really like coreboot and would like to use it on a current motherboard. the idea of having a open source alternative bios resonates with me. I would like to buy a motherboard with skylake chipsets that is supported by coreboot. does anyone recommend a supported skylake motherboard?

Thanks in advance for your time,
                                                    Neal

[Paul Menzel]

Dear Neal,

Am Dienstag, den 09.08.2016, 08:48 -0400 schrieb Neal Elliott:
> I really like coreboot and would like to use it on a current
> motherboard. the idea of having a open source alternative bios
> resonates with me. I would like to buy a motherboard with skylake
> chipsets that is supported by coreboot. does anyone recommend a
> supported skylake motherboard?

To my knowledge, only mobile Skylake variants are supported, that means
the Skylake variants shipped in Google Chromebooks and Google
Chromeboxes.

As you wrote *open source alternative*, please read the Wiki page
*Binary Situation* [1].

The commercially supported Intel chipsets come with a BLOB initializing
the memory (MRC – Memory Reference Code, FSP – Firmware Support
Package), and have a separate processor, the so called Management
Engine (ME), which also runs proprietary, non-free firmware.

For some devices exist native RAM initialization, which is free
software, but which still has some problems in certain configurations.

So with current Intel systems, you get a lot of advantages of the
coreboot firmware framework (payloads, speed, flexibility) but it’s not
fully free.

Unfortunately, as AMD’s current devices also come with closed
components, the only alternative is the not-yet-for-sale Talos Secure
Workstation using the IBM POWER8 processor and architecture [2].

Thanks,

Paul

PS: It’d be great if you just sent plain text messages to mailing
lists.

[1] https://www.coreboot.org/Binary_situation
[2] https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php