Michał Żygowski

This is the 4th edition of the "Status of AMD platforms in coreboot". As usual the talk will cover the most recent news around the AMD support in open-source firmware ecosystem and updates of the topics covered in previous years. The current situation of coreboot project will be disclosed along with new deprecations and shifting more platforms out of the main tree.

The history of AMD cooperation in coreboot projects reaches 2007 where the first contribution appeared for the Geode LX processors. AMD's open-source support continued for many years until now (with some break). Recent coreboot release enforced new requirements on the features supported by the silicon code base. More aging AMD platforms kept losing interest and many of them (including fully open ones) starting to cause unjustifiable overhead, because of accumulated technical debt. And yet again we experience similar situation as with the famous 4.11 branch becoming de facto stable branch for some more AMD platforms (open-source AGESA family14, family15tn, family16kb). Despite the efforts to keep the platforms in the tree by implementing the necessary changes, they landed onto the stable 4.18 branch.

Nowadays AMD is releasing the newest AGESA/FSP with the cooperation of hired coreboot developers. The support covers modern mobile Ryzen chips on Chromebook devices. We (3mdeb) trying to support the AMD platforms by reimplementing the ASUS KGPE-D16 (FSF RYF platform) support in coreboot. However, the situation is growing direr as the maintainership of PC Engines platforms by 3mdeb has ended. We would like to present Dasharo plan for long term stable and sustainable support for older platforms. If you are interested in open-source firmware for most open x86 platforms on the market feel free to tune in and discuss the ideas with us.

This is the 3rd edition of the "Status of AMD platform in coreboot". The talk will cover the most recent news around the AMD support in open source firmware ecosystem and updates of the topics covered in previous years. We would like to present status of FSF RYF KGPE-D16 platform revival and related upstreaming effort, TrenchBoot progress for AMD platforms and status of recent support in coreboot and oreboot projects. Finally we would like to present Dasharo - open source firmware distribution with long term stable support for older AMD platforms.

The history of AMD cooperation in coreboot projects reaches 2007 where the first contribution appeared for the Geode LX processors. AMD's open-source support continued for many years until now (with some break). This presentation will briefly repeat the history of AMD and open source firmware. Moreover, recent coreboot releases started to enforce certain requirements on the features supported by the silicon code base. Aging platforms kept losing interest and many of them (including fully open ones) starting to cause unjustifiable overhead, because of accumulated technical debt. Most probably it will result in similar situation as with famous 4.11 branch becoming de facto stable branch for some platforms (e.g. FSP1.0 Bay Trail or ASUS KGPE-D16). Nowadays AMD is releasing the newest AGESA with the cooperation of hired coreboot developers, but charter covers modern Ryzen-based processors. We trying to support the AMD platforms by reimplementing the ASUS KGPE-D16 (FSF RYF platform) support in coreboot and keeping the PC Engines platforms in the top of tree. We would like to present Dasharo plan for long term stable and sustainable support for older platforms. If you are interested in open source firmware for most open x86 platforms on the market feel free to tune in and discuss the ideas with us.

The presentation describes efforts of porting OpenPOWER architecture firmware to open source firmware framework - coreboot. Although OpenPOWER firmware has been open-sourced some time ago, it may still benefit by implementing the support in coreboot. The differences and benefits of the OpenPOWER firmware and coreboot will be mentioned as well as current progress of work and challenges faced during development.

The IBM POWERPC architecture exists since early 90. Many may also know that the POWER processors were used in Apple Macintosh between 1994-2006. Today the IBM goes forward with their POWER processors releasing newer and newer processor families like POWER9 and even POWER10 recently. Modern POWER architecture features very high computing performance with multi-core processors which makes them ideal for servers and computing clusters. They also are great as a workstation, for example Raptor Computing Systems Talos II (POWER9), which is the reference platform used during the coreboot port. A huge advantage of OpenPOWER architecture is its openness. Compared to modern x86 architecture which is full of binary blobs, POWER can easily rival with x86 domination and dethrone it from the most common used processors architecture in modern computers. Although the OpenPOWER firmware and documentation is open-source the development of coreboot for POWER9 is very challenging and full of unknowns. In this presentation you will hear about the current progress of the work on coreboot POWER9 support, what problems we face and how much effort it takes to enable new architecture in coreboot.

The presentation is about AMD's involvement in coreboot evolution and development. Gives a high-level overview of the engagement of the silicon vendor in the coreboot project history. The presentation may contain a little bit of technical aspects of firmware and BIOS. However, the intended audience is not only firmware and BIOS developers, but also free and libre hardware enthusiasts too. If anybody is interested in the future of famous platforms like Asus KGPE-D16, Lenovo G505S, PC Engines apu1/apu2, please attend the presentation.

The history of AMD cooperation in coreboot projects reaches 2007 where the first contribution appeared for the Geode LX processors. AMD's open-source support continued for many years until now (with some break). This presentation will briefly introduce the history of AMD and coreboot, the evolution of the code, processors, creation of CIMX and AGESA and so on. It will also show the gradual change in the AMD attitude to open-source and introduction of binary platform initialization. Binary blobs, very disliked by the open-source community started to cause problems and raised the needs for workarounds to support basic processor features. Soon after that AMD stopped supporting the coreboot community. Moreover, recent coreboot releases started to enforce certain requirements on the features supported by the silicon code base. Aging platforms kept losing interest and many of them (including fully open ones) are being dropped from the main tree. Nowadays AMD released the newest AGESA with the cooperation of hired coreboot developers, but only for Google and their Chromebooks based on Ryzen processors. These are hard times for open firmware on AMD platforms. If you are curious about what is the present status of AMD boards and hardware (for example famous Asus KGPE-D16, Lenovo G505S, PC Engines apu1/apu2) in coreboot and what future awaits them, this presentation will give you a good overview.

In this paper, we are going to introduce Static Root of Trust Measurement with Verified Boot using different mechanisms of SPI flash protection. We shall prove VBoot great support for coreboot, TPM usage, and cryptographical operations, and its ability to perform measured and verified boot. We will explain why the Root Key and Recovery Key are the most important components in the VBoot and should be well protected. As a result, we will show a mechanism for automatic decryption of a disk with the assistance of TPM and policies tied to the firmware measurements stored in the TPM.

As PC Engines firmware maintainers and aspiring IBV, we face lots of different issues with development. Critical bugs and regressions are our biggest enemies. Narrowing down serious problem requires a lot of repetitive work. The typical process looks like that: 1. modify & build firmware with a potential fix 2. flash affected firmware version 3. boot system 4. verify if the bug still exists This can take more than 10min and requires human attention not to make a mistake. If you work hours on one issue, this can be boring and at some point, you will make mistakes which can affect results. Automation of point 1 is already done by coreboot-sdk. It also can involve user-developed scripts. Points 2-4 can be automated using RTE. Another issue is that platforms and quality firmware developers are spread around the world and we would like to have reasonable access to key features that help in remote development. Because of that, we created RTE. Remote Testing Environment is an open hardware hat designed for Orange Pi Zero board to work with hardware remotely. It takes advantage of using Linux system and open source frameworks such as Robot Framework to let user conveniently develop firmware, test software and/or hardware. With RTE, your everyday work routines become much faster and easier to maintain from places not related to current setup location. Those include flashing firmware, controlling GPIOs and power management for Device Under Test. RTE is released under CERN Open Hardware License. RTE applications: * Remote access / control (hardware functionality) * Remote industrial application debugging * Compatibility testing * Platform enabling * Performance optimization * Automation validation * Manufacturing procedures support Agenda ------------- In this workshop, we want to present how RTE can be used with open source firmware and help R&D and Q&A teams to achieve their goals. RTE workshop main points: 1. RTE features set. 2. Connecting RTE to real hardware (e.g. PC Engines apu2 or MinnowBoard Dual/Quad). * validation setup - run a simple test in RobotFramework 3. Comparison of simple procedures: * firmware flashing (main goal) * present power control possibilities (direct GPIO and Legacy interface) 4. Development workflow with RTE based on the simple bug. 5. Questionnaire and RTE giveaway. Additional information ---------------------- * Level: Intermediate * Workshop will be interactive with examples * There will be a draw between participants, 3mdeb gives away 3 full RTE platforms (worth 85 USD each) * We are not sure we can handle more than 8 attendees * Please, check out our [GitHub](https://github.com/3mdeb/rte-schematics) repository.

Other people: Piotr Król