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AMD To Support Coreboot On All Upcoming Processors

Posted by timothy on from the you-had-me-at-hello dept.

nukem996 writes "AMD has just announced that they will be supporting Coreboot (previously LinuxBIOS) on all upcoming processors." That means a flexible Free software BIOS replacement with a nice list of benefits.

3 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. And? by ledow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They "support" it now. So do Intel. The problem is not that the processor or even chipset supports it but that the bundled BIOS *IS* coreboot, which is unlikely.

    And even then, every tweak made by a motherboard manufacturer has to be taken account of. It's like saying the AMD "supports" running Linux on it. Course it does, but it doesn't mean that the computer can actually run Linux usefully (Argh! Flashback to the days when a lot machines *couldn't* get basic support under Linux working without patching an tweaking).

    It's a step forward but hardly worth shouting about - when Foxconn, MSI, etc. get on board, then you have a deal. Until then, it's like saying that my computer support FireWire. It does. It just doesn't have any FireWire ports, and I haven't installed the drivers for them on any OS.

    1. Re:And? by oxygene2k2 · · Score: 5, Informative

      AMD made their platform code work for coreboot. That is, the same code they ship to board and BIOS makers, they release to coreboot, and even went the extra mile to integrate it.

      Intel doesn't support coreboot. In fact, they hinder us and we'll have to get each bit of information out of the hardware or by massive coercion. Every support of Intel hardware in coreboot exists despite Intel's efforts.

    2. Re:And? by Barefoot+Monkey · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes, that's what I was thinking too. I recently wrote my own bootloader for a project. It honestly took me less time to do it from scratch (copy kernel from flash to mem, jump to it, done) than to read, understand and customize Coreboot or U-Boot or one of the many everything but the kitchen sink boot projects.

      What you made is a second-stage bootloader. All those really need to do is load some other program into memory and then transfer control to it. Coreboot is a primary bootloader - it handles starting up the computer, setting up the memory and CPU modes, testing harware, providing services such as the hard-drive access that your loader would need, and finally loading your secondary loader for you. Your job was easy because there wasn't much left to do.

      Coreboot is more complicated than your loader because yours was piggybacking off something else, whereas Coreboot is that something else on which other people's loaders rely.

      I'm not sure if I explained that well, but I hope it helped.