The interesting thing is that they refer to NIC vendors all the time - as if that feature is integrated with the ethernet controller (plus some help of the chip

The interesting thing is that they refer to NIC vendors all the time - as if that feature is integrated with the ethernet controller (plus some help of the chipset to keep it alive when everything else is off). However AMD has its own share of extra processors within the CPU and chipset, of which we (at coreboot) know of at least two: SMU and IMC. The firmware for both is still measured in kilobytes, and they seem to have limited access to hardware resources. (for SMU, see http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6103_-_en_-_saal_2_-_201412272145_-_amd_x86_smu_firmware_analysis_-_rudolf_marek.html http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6103_-_en_-_...) Newer chipsets (than kaveri/kabini) come with TrustZone (that ARM stuff) and a "Platform Security Processor", which indicates that there's at least one new processor, likely ARM based.