7 ms·

You mean the dozen people who care? I guess so.

jychang 10y ago
The actual percent of users who use it may be small, but they're the most vocal and activist group who recommend products to the majority of ignorant people. Coreboot is a good thing, and if AMD could implement it, they should do so.
- green7ea 10y ago
  I think there is also a huge benifit for OEMs: it would reduce the cost of developping a Ryzen system. If you're Asus and you want to make a Ryzen motherboard, you have to write or license a BIOS. If Ryzen supports coreboot, this is something you no longer have to do and the system is much closer to working out of the box. The downside for OEMs is that a lot of them use the BIOS as a way to differentiate themselves with extra features. I think there is going to be some initial resistance because of this but it shouldn't be too major.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > I think there is also a huge benifit for OEMs: it would reduce the cost of developping a Ryzen system. There is also a huge potential disbenefit for OEMs: It can make it more difficult to "stand out" from competition by offering a firmware (UEFI, BIOS) that has vendor-specific "advantages": OEMs do of course like implementing such mainboard-vendor-specific modifications; I also heard there seem to be in particular gamers who love such implementations that offer more "graphical bling" in the UEFI firmware. Since when open firmware becomes a desired property of mainboards, OEM will have to be better in terms of concrete features of the hardware instead of graphical tricks to stand out from competition (which is hard work), I can also imagine quite well that OEMs are cautious about such open firmware desires.
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      > It can make it more difficult to "stand out" from competition by offering a firmware (UEFI, BIOS) that has vendor-specific "advantages" Not really. Look at what Samsung does to Android. Let the upstream maintainers do 99.7% of the real work, then change five random things for no reason other than to be able to claim your competitors don't have that.
      - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        It is a long and prosperous tradition. Just look at all the versions of unix out there.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  "The actual percent of users who use it may be small, but they're the most vocal and activist group who recommend products to the majority of ignorant people. " Citation needed?
  - ctrl-j 10y ago
    You need a citation to know that GNU proponents are heavily evangelical? The bastards are worse than Mormons.
    - Spivak 10y ago
      Or that when people buy computers they reach out to their 'techie friend' for recommendations.
    - cwyers 10y ago
      GNU proponents are heavily evangelical. But, if you look at what software and hardware gets used, they don't seem to be very influential. People seem to ask their Windows-using friends and relatives for recommendations, not their closest GNU evangelist.
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      "You need a citation to know that GNU proponents are heavily evangelical? " ;_) No, i need a citation that anyone actually cares what they say.
tscs37 10y ago
While I agree with you, not a lot of people, I still think it would be better if people had the option.
rasz_pl 10y ago
Yes. The real trick is this dozen is usually very influential and should be counted as a force multiplier. This is how Macs became THE multimedia machines 15 years ago(final cut pro).
akerro 10y ago
Dozen of people and dozens of startups and big companies that would be created if CPUs and Mobos were more open.
agumonkey 10y ago
as said on reddit, the fact that it was second or third highest comment hints otherwise.
kriro 10y ago
They could aggressively go after certain corporate/government clients (and obviously also consumers but I'd guess not many really care...sadly) with a "no Management Engine, no secrets, no back doors, just secure" pitch. Not saying it's the right play but there's a strategy.
Qantourisc 10y ago
Don't forget that some companies might wish to run core boot in their stack, to for example allow remote debugging of many servers. (Without costly third party hard/firmware.)

The actual percent of users who use it may be small, but they're the most vocal and activist group who recommend products to the majority of ignorant people. Coreboot is a good thing, and if AMD could implement it, they should do so.

green7ea 10y ago
I think there is also a huge benifit for OEMs: it would reduce the cost of developping a Ryzen system. If you're Asus and you want to make a Ryzen motherboard, you have to write or license a BIOS. If Ryzen supports coreboot, this is something you no longer have to do and the system is much closer to working out of the box. The downside for OEMs is that a lot of them use the BIOS as a way to differentiate themselves with extra features. I think there is going to be some initial resistance because of this but it shouldn't be too major.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > I think there is also a huge benifit for OEMs: it would reduce the cost of developping a Ryzen system. There is also a huge potential disbenefit for OEMs: It can make it more difficult to "stand out" from competition by offering a firmware (UEFI, BIOS) that has vendor-specific "advantages": OEMs do of course like implementing such mainboard-vendor-specific modifications; I also heard there seem to be in particular gamers who love such implementations that offer more "graphical bling" in the UEFI firmware. Since when open firmware becomes a desired property of mainboards, OEM will have to be better in terms of concrete features of the hardware instead of graphical tricks to stand out from competition (which is hard work), I can also imagine quite well that OEMs are cautious about such open firmware desires.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > It can make it more difficult to "stand out" from competition by offering a firmware (UEFI, BIOS) that has vendor-specific "advantages" Not really. Look at what Samsung does to Android. Let the upstream maintainers do 99.7% of the real work, then change five random things for no reason other than to be able to claim your competitors don't have that.
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      It is a long and prosperous tradition. Just look at all the versions of unix out there.
DannyBee 10y ago
"The actual percent of users who use it may be small, but they're the most vocal and activist group who recommend products to the majority of ignorant people. " Citation needed?
- ctrl-j 10y ago
  You need a citation to know that GNU proponents are heavily evangelical? The bastards are worse than Mormons.
  - Spivak 10y ago
    Or that when people buy computers they reach out to their 'techie friend' for recommendations.
  - cwyers 10y ago
    GNU proponents are heavily evangelical. But, if you look at what software and hardware gets used, they don't seem to be very influential. People seem to ask their Windows-using friends and relatives for recommendations, not their closest GNU evangelist.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    "You need a citation to know that GNU proponents are heavily evangelical? " ;_) No, i need a citation that anyone actually cares what they say.

tscs37 10y ago

While I agree with you, not a lot of people, I still think it would be better if people had the option.

rasz_pl 10y ago

Yes. The real trick is this dozen is usually very influential and should be counted as a force multiplier. This is how Macs became THE multimedia machines 15 years ago(final cut pro).

akerro 10y ago

Dozen of people and dozens of startups and big companies that would be created if CPUs and Mobos were more open.

agumonkey 10y ago

as said on reddit, the fact that it was second or third highest comment hints otherwise.

kriro 10y ago

They could aggressively go after certain corporate/government clients (and obviously also consumers but I'd guess not many really care...sadly) with a "no Management Engine, no secrets, no back doors, just secure" pitch. Not saying it's the right play but there's a strategy.

Qantourisc 10y ago

Don't forget that some companies might wish to run core boot in their stack, to for example allow remote debugging of many servers. (Without costly third party hard/firmware.)