[coreboot] Microcode updates for slightly older intel CPU's re: meltdown/spectre

[Timothy Pearson]

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I'll give a few:

1.) Lack of appropriate silicon.  Everything non-ARM in the appropriate
power envelope has a vendor-controlled master processor (ME/PSP/etc.),
and even high end ARM has vendor control processors built in.

2.) Lack of volume.  Think 100k units or higher before prices even start
to come down into "expensive but acceptable", and this plays badly with
point #1 above (non-free == why pay 10x or more for such a machine when
the $200 Clevo model has the same amount of owner control).

3.) Bikeshedding.  Yes, this.  Laptops are a more personal choice than
e.g. desktops; some people want big clunky workstation replacements,
some people want little thin Macbook clones, many want something in
between but with large variation in features.  That's not even getting
into architecture selection problems, since x86 is the root cause of
point #1 being a problem.  Everyone would have to want one model and pay
extra for it to even start looking at volumes reaching the correct level.

4.) Financing.  This is a ~ $200 million or more project from start to
finish; unless someone sympathetic has a lot of Bitcoin stashed away
it's going to be hard to get this to happen.

These are basically the reasons we haven't launched a laptop yet despite
really wanting to -- the market simply isn't ready at this point.  Also
see my earlier post from today on "Security Apathy"; this is helping to
make the market worse, not better, for such a machine.

On 01/11/2018 06:27 PM, echelon at free.fr wrote:
> Peter,
> To initiate this "discussion over beers, etc" (which I hope that we will have at this FOSDEM 2018...), can you give some factual "entry points" sustaining your sharp assertion "no, no we can't"?
> Thanx,
>  Florentin
> 
> ----- Mail d'origine -----
> De: Peter Stuge <peter at stuge.se>
> À: coreboot at coreboot.org
> Envoyé: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 17:13:31 +0100 (CET)
> Objet: Re: [coreboot] Microcode updates for slightly older intel CPU's re: meltdown/spectre
> 
> [799] via coreboot wrote:
>> Can't "we" build one or maybe two crowd founded secure Laptops (12", 15.x")
> 
> The short answer to that is no, no we can't. The long answer is a
> discussion over beers or another prefered beverage.
> 
> 
> //Peter
> 


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