coreboot Changelog

What's new in coreboot 4.6

• CBMEM console development and the Linux Kernel:
• Our cbmem debug console was updated with some nice features. The cbmem console now persists between reboots and is able to be used on some platforms via late init. Also there is a new Linux kernel driver which removes the need for the old cbmem tool to read from the cbmem area. You can find the patch here https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/9641997/ and it can be enabled via GOOGLE_MEMCONSOLE_COREBOOT kconfig option in your kernel – Note that this name may change going forward.
• Critical bugs in TPM 1.2 support:
• coreboot currently has issues with the TPM 1.2 LPC driver implementation. This leads to a misbehavior in SeaBIOS where the TPM gets temporarily deactivated. We plan to publish the bugfix release 4.6.1 when we have these issues sorted out.
• Native graphics and ram init improvements:
• The native graphics was reworked a while ago and should finally support Windows. Numerous bug fixes and EDID support is also now available. Finally, the native ram initialization for sandybridge/ivybridge platforms got patched and supports more RAM modules.
• New and fresh payloads:
• SeaBIOS, FiLO, and iPXE were all recently updated to the latest versions. Https downloads are the default for all payloads now. We provide the libpayload project which is used for writing own payloads from scratch. The library is MOSTLY licensed under BSD and recently received new functionality in order to prepare for the upcoming replacement for the old nvramcui payload. This new payload is called cbui and is based on the nuklear graphics library including keyboard and mouse support. The cbui payload is currently expected to be merged into the main coreboot tree before the next release. The upstream repository is here: https://github.com/siro20/coreboot/tree/cbui/payloads/cbui
• UEFI support: A long road to go:
• coreboot can be used with the Tianocore EDK2 UEFI implementation which is open source and available at Github. Sadly it is not currently integrated into the coreboot build. This has several reasons...
• EDK2 only supports GCC 4.8 profile. coreboot is now running on GCC 6.3.0.
• Incompatibilities with code inside the EDK2 which has not been updated.
• We started to make progress with the integration into our sources and the hope is that by the end of the summer, we finally support the EDK2 payload out-of-the-box. See the current patch state at http://review.coreboot.org/#/c/15057/
• Fighting blobs and proprietary HW components
• coreboot’s ultimate goal would be to replace any closed source firmware stack with free software components. Unfortunately this is not always possible due to signed binaries such as the Intel ME firmware, the AMD PSP and microcode. Recently, a way was discovered to let the Intel ME run in a functional error state and reduce it from 1.5/5MB to 80KB. It’s not perfect but it works from Nehalem up to Skylake based Intel systems. The tool is now integrated into the coreboot build system. The upstream repository is https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner
• Another ongoing improvement is the new utility blobtool. It is currently used for generating the flash descriptor and GbE configuration data on older mainboard which are known to be free software. It can easily be extended for different binaries with well-defined specifications.
• Did you say Ada?:
• coreboot now supports Ada, and a lot work was done integrating Ada into our toolchain. At the moment only the support for formal verification is missing and will be soon added. At that point, we can prove the absence of runtime errors in our Ada code. In short, everybody can start developing Ada code for our project.
• The existing Ada code which can be used from now on is another native graphics initialization which will replace in the long term the current implementation. The native graphics code supports all Intel platforms up to skylake. We offer support for HDMI, VGA, DVI and DP external interfaces as well and is ready to be integrated into our mainboard implementations.
• Toolchain updates:
• A new coreboot toolchain is out. The major toolchain change was going from GCC version 5.3.0 to 6.3.0. There were also minor version updates to GMP, MPFR, Binutils, GDB, IASL, and Clang.