[coreboot] [kernel-hardening] ME and PSP

ron minnich rminnich at gmail.com
Thu Sep 7 17:02:07 CEST 2017


On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 1:07 AM Shawn <citypw at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> RISC-V doesn't have NDA issues like x86 which the firmware freedom
> will get benefit of it.
>

Speaking as someone who has been working on and off with riscv for almost
four years, and who has ported coreboot several times and plan 9 once, I
can tell you it's not that easy. Chips being produced today will require
blobs, for dram and usb at least.

RISCV does not require a license. That's the big change, and it is a great
change. But that one difference is not enough to eliminate the problems we
have with the x86 world today.

All the really hard parts of coreboot ports have involved things not
related to the instruction set, such as DRAM, PCI configuration, and so on.
All those things can be done in a proprietary way without violating RISCV
rules.

I don't think we can assume that an open, unlicensed instruction set
guarantees open, unlicensed, blob-free CPUs and platforms. It's just not
so. If we wait for that to happen, we're going to be disappointed.
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