• [^] # Re: Licence ? Devil's in the deails ?

    Posté par (site web personnel) . En réponse au journal Effort d'ouverture de la part de Nvidia. Évalué à 5. Dernière modification le 25 septembre 2013 à 15:12.

    Sandybridge requires (besides the MRC binary) a MEI binary, for the embedded controller in the chipset.
    Without a proper MEI firmware, the CPU won't even start executing x86 opcodes. The MEI firmware is signed (with some private Intel key).
    You (or someone) might be able to reimplement the raminit part. Good luck cracking the key to MEI firmware signatures.
    It gets better: Intel TXT (some security feature) uses another signed bit of code. This time for x86 (yes, ran on the CPU. Look up Invisible Things Labs, they explain why this is a stupid idea even without regard for any notion of "freedom"). Again signed with some private Intel key.
    You can argue that TXT doesn't matter for you, but then why buy it (and support a company producing such things)?
    There's another vendor, a bit smaller, but with slightly more sensible design decisions, that might suit your needs better.

    http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2012-April/069598.html

    Intel is the least free platform out there. The system RAM does not work on pwer on, and there are tens of thousand of lines of code needed to get it up. All intel gives you (on IvyBridge) for that is a big blob, and the only thing coreboot can do about it is tell you the return value. Not to say that you also need to update the CPU microcode before you can even hope if running this code. I won't bore you with the details, just keep in mind that all other platforms can run without needing a mcrocode update, and have full source for raminit. Two blobs before we can even start talking about the GPU.

    http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?72757-Coreboot-Replacing-Intel-s-Binary-Video-BIOS-Blob&p=279750#post279750