[coreboot] Why do we have FSP-S

Nico Huber nico.h at gmx.de
Mon Apr 30 16:48:23 CEST 2018


Hello Aaron,

thanks for your reply.

On 30.04.2018 05:22, Aaron Durbin wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 28, 2018 at 7:16 AM, Nico Huber <nico.h at gmx.de> wrote:
>> Hello coreboot folks, hello Intel and Google coreboot developers,
>>
>> back on Tuesday, some of us discovered a commit on gerrit [1] that
>> implements (another) foreign interface inside coreboot. Discussing
> 
> It's more of a bridge into coreboot's infrastructure, imo.

It is. Anyway, maybe discuss that in another thread or on gerrit.

> 
>> it didn't go well and I kind of bursted. I feel sorry about that now
>> (especially because I got too personal).
>>
>> One of the causes for this clash definitely was that things apparently
>> were discussed before but not with coreboot (i.e. this coreboot mailing
>> list). So I'll try to take the general discussion here, but I've to
>> start some years back, where you lost me.
>>
>> Some questions (that I believe have to be answered) right away. I'll
>> argue about why later, so these won't get lost (in an already too long
>> email):
>>
>>
>> TLDR;
>> For Google:
>> You kind of introduced blobs in coreboot (with Sandy Bridge) which was
>> a simple jump-in-jump-out thing and kind of accepted. The argument was
>> that the things it does aren't documented by Intel anymore, AFAIR. But
>> with Broadwell suddenly another blob emerged (in ramstage) some
>> `refcode.elf` AIUI. It turned out, later, that this blob (also) does
>> things that were open source for Haswell (and would work verbatim on
>> Broadwell). It seems to play a role comparable to FSP-S.
>>   o What's the story behind this blob?
>>   o Why was it introduced?
>>   o Was there more than IP concerns? Time to market pressure maybe?
> 
> Saying it's comparable to FSP-S is apt. The story is, like most
> things, that it has specific things that are not architectural that
> Intel thinks they need to be secret. Typical settings are related to
> power management. When needing to be competitive in the laptop space
> power is a big concern. Time to market may have been a thing too, but
> I don't recall all the specifics. I'll get to it later in the
> response, but there are temporal components to decisions and/or how
> things change over time that are not within Google's control when
> working on a particular platform.
> 
>>
>> For Intel:
>> It's hard for me to understand what parts of your silicon init you can
>> open-source and what parts you can't. I know your BIOS Writer's Guides
>> (BWG) / BIOS Spec, and many things therein are often published by you
>> or Google. Please tell us.
>>   o Are the things that you can *not* open-source documented at all?
>>   o if so, in these BWG documents?
>>   o Or is everything in these documents generally publishable (with
>>     some NDA clearance, ofc)?
>>   o For a configuration of FSP-S that just runs the bare minimum to
>>     boot (e.g. skips questionable add-ons like TXT, SGX), is there
>>     anything not publishable?
>>   o Can anything be done to get more documentation published? e.g.
>>     for things that are done in open source (or were done in the past)
>>     but are not publicly documented.
> 
> Based on my working history a lot of BWGs and/or specs are usually
> wrong. They don't always contain the right information, but generally
> contain quite a few things that are wrong where you second guess
> everything in the docs. This should sound familiar: the 'reference
> code' is the documentation. Most docs are not in sync with reality or
> necessarily with how the silicon was actually designed. It's my belief
> when there wasn't as much change from version to version, the
> copy-pasting in docs just kinda worked. But as things have been
> getting more complicated and incorporating more 'features' the
> documentation has not been keeping up.

Still these documents exist. And I deem them most valuable. I know there
are flaws that can drive you crazy. But! they give a very good overview
about what has to happen for silicon init. If published (for my sake w/o
the secret ingredient bits) [2], they would be a great reference for
discussions about the design of clean silicon-init code. We could har-
ness the power of the community much better.

It doesn't matter if somebody with access to the reference code has to
fix some bugs later, once you have a decent maintainable code base.
Neither would a blob that hides the secret ingredients if it only con-
tains those (and no infrastructure / control flow; I think you, Aaron,
and me share the same opinion on that).

> 
>>
>>
>> So why ask? The original introduction of blobs in coreboot in general
>> happened with the argument that the things it does (e.g. memory init)
>> are not documented anymore by Intel. This is a valid argument because
>> the lack of documentation makes it harder to write clean code. I also
>> believe it's true (that no documentation exists) because I've seen a
>> previous BWG that already referred a lot to the reference code.
>>
>> But, AFAIR, the introduction of blobs in coreboot's *ramstage* was never
>> discussed. The blobs I've seen so far all did things that were already
>> open source for earlier platforms. Plus they are twisting coreboot into
>> something that isn't coreboot anymore. Architectural changes happen in
>> chipset specific code instead of moving coreboot as a whole (after an
>> open discussion). Also, most of the positive aspects about coreboot are
>> lost.
> 
> Purely business commentary: In order to develop a competitive laptop
> on recent hardware one needs to include the features that consumers
> expect. Intel also ties those features inside of FSP, but FSP has a
> responsibility problem. It has traditionally attempted to do things it
> should not. FSP should be a library of sorts, but it has things in
> there it shouldn't. I mentioned some of this on the CL itself about
> our usage of SkipMpInit. It trying to take over resources that it
> shouldn't (among other things).
> 
> What architectural changes are you referring to? And what is your

You've got me there. I meant architectural things, not changes. Like
that patch on gerrit. It doesn't seem to be Intel specific, I also
can't find any soc_ reference in it. Yet, it's pushed to soc/intel/
and to me that looks like somebody wants to sneak it it (without big
discussion / being thought through for all of coreboot).

> definition of coreboot (I know see you wrote it below :)? early
> firmware that will initialize everything in open source for Intel
> platforms? I wish that were the case, but it's not something that is
> allowed by Intel currently. I'd love to see more granularity in FSP,
> but as noted in the CL commentary Intel hasn't been accepting of my
> suggestions for making things more granular such that one could do the
> only things that are deemed 'super secret' by Intel. The muddling of
> responsibility and lack of granularity are the current result.
> 
>>
>> Of course, it's hard to argument about whether something is coreboot
>> or not without a clear definition of coreboot. But let me get this
>> one straight: It's definitely not coreboot just because it happens on
>> coreboot.org.
>>
>> I'll try to sum up what is coreboot to me, and compare that to a current
>> coreboot with FSP. coreboot
>>
>>   1. is free software
>>   2. is open source
>>   3. is auditable
>>   4. is lean (less code means less bugs)
>>   5. gives control to the user
>>
>> but with FSP:
>>
>>   1. You can not fully adapt it, you can't even just download it (often
>>      have to steal the FSP binary):
>>      0%
>>   2. Comparing the sizes of open-source parts and FSP, maybe 30%. But
>>      if you don't count open-source code that is only needed to handle
>>      blob issues, rather
>>      20%
> 
> Is this 20-30% coreboot/open source of the total?  Were you counting
> the edk2 stuff in there? A lot of the bloat in FSP comes from open
> source edk2.

You can't count EDK2 into it. Once it's built into FSP, it's not open-
source any more (unless somebody proves what parts match a reproducible
compilation of the open-source code). And for an open-source experience
you'd still need means to adapt these EDK2 parts in the binary. It was
just a wild guess based on my experience with Kaby Lake FSP (~500KiB),
and guessed 200KiB coreboot.

> 
>>   3. If you are backed by a huge company or government, you can audit
>>      coreboot+FSP (I guess), if not than not, 50%? But given that the
>>      size of the whole package is about 10 times the size of a clean
>>      implementation, you have to audit 10 times more code (of much
>>      poorer quality), thus at most
>>      5%
>>   4. 0% (see above)
>>   5. That seems to be my only point that Intel cares about. Still,
>>      coreboot compatible binaries are often not available. You need
>>      very weird workarounds if the one setting you miss is not there:
>>      50%
>>
>> Numbers are just educated guesses, but might match reality. If you
>> average these, you'll see that coreboot+FSP is only 15% of (my)
>> coreboot. I would estimate that you can get up to 20% with the
>> design of FPS2.0.
> 
> I agree with the overall assessment above. As currently
> deployed/supported FSP is not really geared to people who don't have a
> more intimate relationship with Intel. It's been brought up numerous
> times, but it's Intel's decision to make a better product.

Right, quality of their products is up to them. But isn't it our re-
sponsibility to decide whether they can do that (15%) in the name of
coreboot?

Nico

[2] Assuming that the BWGs don't contain the secret ingredients, even
    an NDA offer to all coreboot developer's (both hired ones and indi-
    viduals) could help. If Intel allows to derive open-source code from
    it (e.g. after a private review on gerrit) people would have less
    doubts about signing an NDA, IMHO. Just a random thought; anything I
    can come up with atm seems to be better than the status quo.

>>
>> So it's time for an FSP3.0 that was designed with the community,
>> I'd say.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Nico
>>
>> [1] https://review.coreboot.org/#/c/coreboot/+/25634/



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