Coreboot (previously called LinuxBIOS) is a project aimed at replacing non-free firmware in proprietary BIOS
After 4 months elapsed since the release of version 4.17, the coreboot project has published the CoreBoot 4.18 project release and in the creation of the new version more than 200 developers participated, who prepared more than 1800 changes and of which 50 of those authors sent their first patches.
For those who are unfamiliar with CoreBoot, you should know that this is an open source alternative to the traditional Basic I / O System (BIOS) that was already on MS-DOS 80s PCs and replacing it with UEFI (Unified Extensible). CoreBoot is also a free proprietary firmware analog and is available for full verification and auditing. CoreBoot is used as the base firmware for hardware initialization and boot coordination.
Including graphics chip initialization, PCIe, SATA, USB, RS232. At the same time, the binary FSP 2.0 (Intel Firmware Support Package) components and the binary firmware for the Intel ME subsystem, which are required to initialize and launch the CPU and chipset, are integrated into CoreBoot.
Main new features of CoreBoot 4.18
In this new version of CoreBoot 4.18 that is presented, it is highlighted that added support for 23 motherboards, 19 of which are used on Chrome OS devices or Google servers. Among which the following stand out and are not from Google:
- MSI PRO Z690-A WIFI DDR4
- AMD Burma
- AMD Pademelon
- Siemens MC APL7
In addition to this, it is noted that implemented the ability to generate SBoM (firmware software bill of materials), which determine the composition of the components of software included in the firmware image, for example, to automate vulnerability checking or license scanning in the firmware.
Another change that stands out is that added ability to define operations for each device to sconfig, a compiler for the device tree structure that describes the hardware components present. The operations are specified in the form of an identifier C.
Added the ability to detect the presence of i2c devices when creating device records in ACPI/SSDT tables. this feature can be used to detect touchpads using the native prompt of "detect", bypassing the "probe" flag previously used for touchpads, which is specific to the Linux kernels used in ChromeOS. It is mentioned that touch screens require a more complicated power sequence, to be done in the future, after which they will also change.
It is also highlighted that work continued on the fourth edition of the mechanism resource allocation (RESOURCE_ALLOCATOR_V4), which implements support for manipulating multiple resource ranges, using the entire address space, and allocating memory above 4 GB.
Of the other changes that stand out in this new version:
- Added Kconfig entries to optionally provide a path to CoSWID tags instead of using the default CoSWID tags
- Updated payload component based on the UEFI EDK II (TianoCore) stack, which has been tested with Intel Core (2nd to 12th generation), Intel Small Core BYT, BSW, APL, GLK and GLK- R, AMD Stoney Ridge and Picasso.
- Added Makefile.inc to generate and create coswid tags
- The classic initialization mechanism for multiprocessor mode (LEGACY_SMP_INIT) has been deprecated, being replaced by the PARALLEL_MP initialization code.
- Added smbus console driver.
- The checkpatch utility provides support for the Linux 5.19 kernel.
- Continued translation of ACPI to ASL 2.0 syntax.
- Removed support for Google Brya4ES motherboard.
Added support for Intel Meteor Lake, Mediatek Mt8188, and AMD Morgana SoC.
If you are interested in knowing more about this new version of CoreBoot 4.18, you can consult the details In the following link.
Get CoreBoot
Finally, for those interested in being able to obtain this new version of CoreBoot they can do it from their download section, which can be found on the official website of the project.
In addition to that in it they will be able to find documentation and more information about the project.