[coreboot] Owner-controlled POWER9 Talos II [was: Disabling Intel ME 11 via undocumented mode]

[Timothy Pearson]

On 09/06/2017 01:05 PM, Rene Shuster wrote:
> Thanks for sharing this info.
> 
> So the 4x SATA ports are optional and powered by PM8069, and they will
> only be present if you checkbox the "Integrated Microsemi SAS Controller
> (Proprietary)" on the purchase page, correct? Or in other words: if you
> don't checkbox "Integrated Microsemi SAS Controller (Proprietary)" you
> will receive a board with no SATA ports?

Correct.  Given the advantages of NVMe especially for a high-power
development system like the Talos™ II this was considered an acceptable
tradeoff.

> How is the Samsung NVMe drive physically connected (M.2/U.2 or PCIe
> slot)? What model# is it?

PCIe.  We'll be selecting an active model closer to machine ship;
Samsung part numbers can change over time so we don't necessarily want
to commit to a given part # at this point.

> So BCM it is. They have a pretty thorough Diagnostic for their NICs. I'm
> using it on some of our servers when it's time to run diagnostics. It's
> DOS based (but they have an UEFI version as well) and it does check
> quite a few things ("Register Tests, Memory Tests, Miscellaneous Tests,
> Data Tests, Cable Tests, APE Register Tests and APE Diagnostics
> Tests"). For the BCM5719 the diag is located here:
> https://docs.broadcom.com/docs-and-downloads/docs/eula_download/570x/B57udiag-17.2.03.zip
> It includes the B57Diag.pdf which might be of interest for anyone who
> wants to reverse engineer the fw.

Sounds good.  This is the only device on the board that requires
firmware, but it is behind the IOMMU and the FSF has indicated that we
can still obtain RYF with this limitation.

That being said, we'd love to see a libre firmware created for this
controller as it would allow not only this system, but future systems,
to be blob-free while using a modern non-Intel GbE NIC...

-- 
Timothy Pearson
Raptor Engineering
+1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line)
+1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard)
https://www.raptorengineering.com