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>remote monitoring and control There are opensource ways to do out of band management without it. >consumer benefits. Related tech also helped DRM machines th

>remote monitoring and control There are opensource ways to do out of band management without it. >consumer benefits. Related tech also helped DRM machines through Trusted Computing alliance. Nobody I knew who was knowledgeable wanted that shit in the first place. It was always edging away consumer control of the platform. DRM is part of the problem here! Same thing with web standards. What annoys me the most about this is the audacity of calling it "consumer benefits". >probably got defense contracts or payments for selective use by NSA or other organizations Fine, but that's not a good enough reason to backdoor literally everything for everyone else. (reminds me of systemd and redhat actually)

forapurpose 9y ago
>>remote monitoring and control > There are opensource ways to do out of band management without it. I'd be surprised if there is a cost-effective open source alternative to this requirement: Remotely access and control a computer under any circumstance where it has power and a physical network connection. Solutions like AMT work even if there is no functioning processor or memory, because ME provides its own processor and memory. The open source alternative would need the same hardware. At best, it would mean the corporate IT department designing, buying, installing, integrating, and supporting additional hardware, for tens of thousands of computers. That's very hard to justify when the computers come with hardware already installed, integrated with everything else, and supported by the vendor. If someone could put FOSS on ME (or competing proprietary solutions), I'd be all for it. I suspect it would be very difficult, as we can't even figure out how to disable ME.
- bubblethink 9y ago
  There's open BMC, which I think Facebook uses. Google has its own thing from a recent thread.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Most BMCs are rather limited aren't they? They can switch power off and on, read a few sensors. ME goes well beyond that from what I gather.
  - wmf 9y ago
    That's what BMCs were like 15 years ago; they're much more sophisticated now.
  - snuxoll 9y ago
    They've supported a lot more than that for a very long time. The BMCs on both my ThinkServer TD340 and ProLiant ML10 support remote KVM access, CD/DVD emulation (mount a local .iso as a virtual drive on the server), firmware updates, and quite a bit more. On top of that, I should note they do this without assistance of the Intel ME. The remote KVM access is handled through a video adapter embedded in the BMC.
    - forapurpose 9y ago
      I agree but those are servers, where the extra investment is worthwhile (server outages cost much more than a user desktop) and market demand is driven by people like you and me. I was talking about end-user desktops and laptops.
- kiallmacinnes 9y ago
  Right, out of band management (by today's definition) means - assuming the chassis has power and network, you can manage the machines, this is primarily a hardware problem. As much as I root for Open Source software, I don't see how OSS can replace the AMT stack. Our team has several racks of R&D servers 7500km away from the bulk of the team, and having OOB management is vital. Absolutely vital.
  - jancsika 9y ago
    > As much as I root for Open Source software, I don't see how OSS can replace the AMT stack. The claim that extant FLOSS solutions can stand in for AMT was false, but now the replies to that have set up a false dichotomy. The opposite of a monstrously complicated, buggy proprietary interface with undocumented features is a compartmentalized, robust proprietary interface with a fully-documented public interface. "Sorry, we don't want to show you the design specs for our hardware." "Sorry, we don't want to show you the code for our secret sauce." That's fine. Just give the bits that can be flipped to slide all the way from maximum ease like your R&D use case to maximum lockdown like a Bitcoin-based service.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ece 9y ago
  Wouldn't it just take a motherboard maker or two to find an alternative to the PCH, like Nvidia nforce or a VIA chipset. adopt something like openbmc and sell it as an open feature? No intel PCH, no Intel ME. Seems like the Linux kernel is eager to support it: https://lwn.net/Articles/683320/ https://lwn.net/Articles/683320/ What happened to 3rd parties making chipsets? Another case of Intel abusing it's monopoly?
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    I'd love it. But it probably would increase the manufacturer's costs for the motherboard (including engineering, component costs, etc.), distract the organization (managers, engineers, purchasing personnel, etc. spending time on this novel tech instead of just buying Intel/AMD chipsets), reduce quality (can they really compete with Intel's engineering resources?), which increases support costs, etc. ... all for a market that unfortunately is too small to measure.
    - ece 9y ago
      The consumer market might be small, but the enterprise market would be what it is. I can't imagine openbmc being more expensive than a builtin wifi card with an external antenna connector for basic features. Features like RDP would be more off course. I imagine they could take a similar embedded processor and slap openbmc on it and market it as open just fine. The fact is, no alternatives to Intel PCH exist, so doing this isn't even an option. If Nvidia nForce or a VIA chipset existed for the newest Xeon with similar capabilities as the PCH minus the Intel ME, would you really doubt that there wouldn't be some motherboard maker that would go this route? VIA used to make dual socket server class chipsets, for the pentium 3, which ever age was in.
      - forapurpose 9y ago
        > I can't imagine openbmc being more expensive than a builtin wifi card with an external antenna connector for basic features The cost of IoT devices supports what you are saying.
  - 9y ago

forapurpose 9y ago

>>remote monitoring and control > There are opensource ways to do out of band management without it. I'd be surprised if there is a cost-effective open source alternative to this requirement: Remotely access and control a computer under any circumstance where it has power and a physical network connection. Solutions like AMT work even if there is no functioning processor or memory, because ME provides its own processor and memory. The open source alternative would need the same hardware. At best, it would mean the corporate IT department designing, buying, installing, integrating, and supporting additional hardware, for tens of thousands of computers. That's very hard to justify when the computers come with hardware already installed, integrated with everything else, and supported by the vendor. If someone could put FOSS on ME (or competing proprietary solutions), I'd be all for it. I suspect it would be very difficult, as we can't even figure out how to disable ME.

bubblethink 9y ago
There's open BMC, which I think Facebook uses. Google has its own thing from a recent thread.
ams6110 9y ago
Most BMCs are rather limited aren't they? They can switch power off and on, read a few sensors. ME goes well beyond that from what I gather.
- wmf 9y ago
  That's what BMCs were like 15 years ago; they're much more sophisticated now.
- snuxoll 9y ago
  They've supported a lot more than that for a very long time. The BMCs on both my ThinkServer TD340 and ProLiant ML10 support remote KVM access, CD/DVD emulation (mount a local .iso as a virtual drive on the server), firmware updates, and quite a bit more. On top of that, I should note they do this without assistance of the Intel ME. The remote KVM access is handled through a video adapter embedded in the BMC.
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    I agree but those are servers, where the extra investment is worthwhile (server outages cost much more than a user desktop) and market demand is driven by people like you and me. I was talking about end-user desktops and laptops.
kiallmacinnes 9y ago
Right, out of band management (by today's definition) means - assuming the chassis has power and network, you can manage the machines, this is primarily a hardware problem. As much as I root for Open Source software, I don't see how OSS can replace the AMT stack. Our team has several racks of R&D servers 7500km away from the bulk of the team, and having OOB management is vital. Absolutely vital.
- jancsika 9y ago
  > As much as I root for Open Source software, I don't see how OSS can replace the AMT stack. The claim that extant FLOSS solutions can stand in for AMT was false, but now the replies to that have set up a false dichotomy. The opposite of a monstrously complicated, buggy proprietary interface with undocumented features is a compartmentalized, robust proprietary interface with a fully-documented public interface. "Sorry, we don't want to show you the design specs for our hardware." "Sorry, we don't want to show you the code for our secret sauce." That's fine. Just give the bits that can be flipped to slide all the way from maximum ease like your R&D use case to maximum lockdown like a Bitcoin-based service.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ece 9y ago
Wouldn't it just take a motherboard maker or two to find an alternative to the PCH, like Nvidia nforce or a VIA chipset. adopt something like openbmc and sell it as an open feature? No intel PCH, no Intel ME. Seems like the Linux kernel is eager to support it: https://lwn.net/Articles/683320/ https://lwn.net/Articles/683320/ What happened to 3rd parties making chipsets? Another case of Intel abusing it's monopoly?
- forapurpose 9y ago
  I'd love it. But it probably would increase the manufacturer's costs for the motherboard (including engineering, component costs, etc.), distract the organization (managers, engineers, purchasing personnel, etc. spending time on this novel tech instead of just buying Intel/AMD chipsets), reduce quality (can they really compete with Intel's engineering resources?), which increases support costs, etc. ... all for a market that unfortunately is too small to measure.
  - ece 9y ago
    The consumer market might be small, but the enterprise market would be what it is. I can't imagine openbmc being more expensive than a builtin wifi card with an external antenna connector for basic features. Features like RDP would be more off course. I imagine they could take a similar embedded processor and slap openbmc on it and market it as open just fine. The fact is, no alternatives to Intel PCH exist, so doing this isn't even an option. If Nvidia nForce or a VIA chipset existed for the newest Xeon with similar capabilities as the PCH minus the Intel ME, would you really doubt that there wouldn't be some motherboard maker that would go this route? VIA used to make dual socket server class chipsets, for the pentium 3, which ever age was in.
    - forapurpose 9y ago
      > I can't imagine openbmc being more expensive than a builtin wifi card with an external antenna connector for basic features The cost of IoT devices supports what you are saying.
- 9y ago