[coreboot] Dell R610 Support

[Ed Hau]

Hey Nico,

Thank you for the info this is what I was looking for before starting on 
what
looks like it might have been a futile task (for myself). I am sure I 
can find
other machines that work just as well for my workload. My goal is to 
find a
board that is not yet supported by coreboot as I would very much like to
get involved in development of coreboot and for me I very much need 
something
hands on to learn.

Does there happen to be a list of vendors that are more friendly than 
Intel to
work with? I'll keep looking around to see if I can find something that 
fits into
my above criteria and isn't running the intel Nehalem/Westmere 
processors.

Thanks

On 2018-12-11 04:29, Nico Huber wrote:

> Hello Ed,
> 
> > I just started looking into adding support for the dell r610.
> 
> I really don't want to discourage you, but if I'm looking at the 
> correct
> datasheet, this machine is using Nehalem/Westmere EP processors (e.g.
> Xeon X5550 etc.). If that is the case, this is no project suited for a
> coreboot beginner: It's unlikely that Intel would give out any useful
> documentation about these processors and there is no platform alike
> (i.e. with QPI) in coreboot. Reverse engineering is possible, but as a
> spare-time project this could take years.
> 
> Maybe you can find another system that fits your workloads and already
> has some coreboot chipset support. Though, on the Intel server front
> it's not looking very good. Intel fought hard to keep these platforms
> coreboot free.
> 
> Nico