Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Coreboot on AMD Turin: A Firmware Showdown

2025-09-15

Running Coreboot on the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 motherboard with AMD's newest Turin server processor presented unexpected challenges. AMD's provided firmware blobs proved insufficient to release the CPU from a PSP reset. A workaround involving injecting Coreboot into the vendor firmware and flashing it back was implemented, but this wasn't ideal. The article delves into the AMD PSP firmware structure, including EFS, PSP, and BIOS directories, detailing how comparing vendor and Coreboot firmware differences, specifically fixing SPI speeds, eSPI configuration, and Multi Gen EFS values, led to successful booting. However, using public PSP blobs failed due to a differing root key. The authors discovered flawed firmware from AMD and have submitted a fix request. Finally, using official firmware from the Turin PI package achieved successful booting.

Coreboot Enables AMD Turin Support on Gigabyte MZ33-AR1: Phase 1 Complete

2025-08-16

This blog post details the first phase of enabling AMD Turin support in coreboot and porting it to the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 motherboard. Funded by the NLnet Foundation, the project builds upon AMD's push for open-source firmware. The team successfully created the Turin SoC structure within coreboot, extracted and integrated the necessary PSP firmware packages, and built basic MZ33-AR1 motherboard support. While challenges remained with integrating public Turin PSP blobs, workarounds allowed a successful boot, paving the way for future improvements.

RAM Data Remanence Times: Significant Differences Between DDR4 and DDR5

2024-12-15

3mdeb conducted research testing data remanence times in different RAM types (DDR4 and DDR5). Results showed DDR5 data vanishes almost instantly after power loss, while DDR4 data persists for significantly longer, up to two minutes. This highlights critical differences in data security between RAM types. A custom UEFI application was used, writing and comparing memory patterns while accounting for temperature and humidity. This research is significant for understanding memory data security and designing more secure systems.