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Breaking News! AMD is open sourcing the API for the x86 bootloader
(community.amd.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Technology
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I'm surprised that chipmakers waited this long. I have the feeling they all treat their firmware divisions as a necessary evil.
Has there ever been positive news associated with the lowest levels of firmware, or is it at best begrudging "AGESA 4.2.0.0 finally fixed the issue where the memory is clocked down to 250MHz when there are two runners on base" fix notices.
If they can toss the problem on a bunch of enthusiasts and people willing to finance open-source developers, they get it our of their hair and earn some public praise.
Realistically, it might be interesting for long-term platform support-- if someone wants to keep tweaking and optimizing a 10-year-old platform, they'll have more tools at their disposal to do so.
I guess at some point the actual hardware initialization was still something to set yourself they could use to set themselves apart from others. Then it would involve patents and what not. But yes, I can't imagine that there is a lot of magic left for the established platforms. It might be different for entirely new beasts like Apple's "new" machines with a lot of custom chips.