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

[Nico Huber]

Hi,

On 12.01.2018 10:51, Mike Banon wrote:
> Hi Nico,
> 
>>
>> you seem to be misinformed about the G505s. There is no
>> open-source gfx init for AMD (not in firmware, not in the OS),
>> so within your requirements it's not usable as a laptop
>>
> 
> I've had a small discussion with bridgman from AMD (at Phoronix forums)
> and he told me that VBIOS needed by G505S - aka "gfx init for AMD" -
> - is "effectively open source" - a byte code which is possible to parse
> with [AtomDis] open source interpreter

well, the same holds for every program where an open-source emulator for
its architecture exists. So thanks John Bridgman for open-sourcing the
majority of programs in the world! lol...

> 
> Only problem is that the last update of AtomDis was at 2011 - so, while it
> should be able to parse 100% of G505S integrated / discrete GPUs AtomBIOSes
> (because these GPUs were developed before 2011 if I am correct)
> maybe AtomDis couldn't parse everything for the modern AMD GPUs

I'm not interested in any disassembly.

To my knowledge, there is no OSS implementation because it's not docu-
mented what the AtomBIOS byte code does, i.e. how AMDs display engine
works and is configured (I might be wrong, if so please tell me and I
might start to write code for it soon). If that is true, it shows that
there is no technically reason for keeping it under wraps but the de-
cision not to document the hardware is pure political.

Nico