The release of CoreBoot 4.16 has been published, which develops a free alternative to proprietary firmware and BIOS. The project's code is distributed under the GPLv2 license. A total of 170 developers contributed to the creation of the new version, preparing 1770 changes.
Key innovations:
- Support has been added for 33 motherboards, 22 of which are used in devices with Chrome OS or on servers Google. Among the unrelated to Google boards:
- Acer Aspire VN7-572G
- AMD Chausie
- ASROCK H77 Pro4-M
- ASUS P8Z77-M
- Emulation QEMU power9
- Intel Alderlake-N RVP
- Prodrive Atlas
- Star Labs Star Labs StarBook Mk V (i3-1115G4 and i7-1165G7)
- System76 gaze16 3050, 3060, and 3060-b
- Support for Google Corsola, Nasher, and Stryke motherboards has been discontinued.
- Support for CPU Power9 and SoC AMD Sabrina has been added.
- An option has been added to disable the IME (Intel Management Engine) subsystem, which is supplied with most modern motherboards with Intel processors and operates as a separate microprocessor, functioning independently of the CPU and performing tasks that need to be separated from the operating system, such as processing protected content (DRM), implementing TPM (Trusted Platform Module) modules, and low-level interfaces for monitoring and controlling hardware. To disable IME in systems with processors from the Skylake family to Alder Lake, the parameter me_state is used in CMOS, setting it to 1 will disable the engine. An .enable method has been added for changing the CSME state via CMOS, the state of which corresponds to the parameter me_state.
- A coreboot-configurator has been added, a simple graphical interface for changing CMOS settings in Coreboot CBFS, using the nvramtool utility.
- The apcb_v3_edit utility has been added for editing binary files of APCB V3 (AMD PSP Customization Block) and substituting up to 16 SPD (Serial Presence Detect) in them.
- Updated submodules amd_blobs, arm-trusted-firmware, blobs, chromeec, intel-microcode, qc_blobs, and vboot.
- The code for configuring LAPIC (Local Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller) has been moved to MP init.
- Support for ANSI escape sequences has been added to highlight important events, such as errors and warnings, when logging output in the interactive console.
- The cbmem_dump_console function has been implemented, similar to cbmem_dump_console_to_uart, but working with normally configured consoles.
- Live image settings have been adapted to work with NixOS 21.11 distribution. Support for the iasl package, which has been replaced with acpica-tools, has been discontinued.
- The U-Boot loader has been updated to version 2021.10.
- Support has been added for systems with more than 128 CPU cores.
- A driver for Semtech sx9360 SAR proximity sensors used in Samsung devices has been added.
- A driver for SD controllers SGenesys Logic GL9750 used in Chromebooks has been added.
- Support for Realtek RT8125 Ethernet controllers has been added.
- A driver for Fibocom 5G WWAN ACPI has been added.
- Support for mixed memory topologies when using DDR4 has been added.
- Support for FSP 2.3 (Flexible Software Package) specifications has been added.
- The code for computing hashes used in verification and assessing the state of CBFS has been revised.
- Support for PCI-e Resizable BAR (Base Address Registers) technology, allowing the CPU to access the entire video memory of the PCI card, has been added.
Additionally, a transition plan has been introduced starting with the release 4.18 to the fourth edition of the resource allocation mechanism (RESOURCE_ALLOCATOR_V4), which adds support for manipulating multiple resource ranges, utilizing the entire address space, and allocating memory above 4 GB. The upcoming Coreboot 4.18 release, expected in November, will also deprecate the legacy multi-processor mode initialization mechanism (LEGACY_SMP_INIT), which has been replaced by the PARALLEL_MP initialization code.
Source: opennet.ru
