Release 24.05 of Coreboot

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Presented project release CoreBoot 24.05, developing a free alternative to proprietary firmware and BIOS. Project code distributed by licensed under GPLv2. The new version includes 722 changes, in the creation of which 131 developers took part.

Basic changes:

  • Support for 64-bit CoreBoot builds has been announced as stable and ready for production implementation.
  • Support for 2 processors (POWER9 and RISC-V) and 25 platforms is implemented. Added support for motherboards:
    • AMD BirmanPlus for SoC Glinda and SoC Phoenix.
    • ASROCK Z97 Extreme6.
    • Dell OptiPlex 7020/9020 MT and Dell OptiPlex 7020/9020 SFF.
    • Framework Azalea (CoreBoot will be available use on a Framework 13 laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7040 processor).
    • HP Pro 3500.
    • Lenovo ThinkCentre M700/M900 Tiny and Lenovo ThinkCentre M710s
    • Raptor Computing Systems Talos II (POWER9).
    • SiFive HiFive Unmatched (RISC-V64).
    • 17 boards used on various devices with Chrome OS or on Google servers.
  • Removed support for two motherboards: Intel Alderlake-M RVP and Intel Alderlake-M RVP with Chrome EC
  • Updated support for SoC ibm/power9 and sifive/fu740.
  • Added support for compiling multiple TPM (Trusted Platform Module) drivers at once, which allows for simultaneous support of the TPM 1.x and TPM 2.x specifications.
  • For systems based on the ARM64 architecture, support has been added for execution using exception levels EL1, EL2 and EL3 (Exception Level). Previously, operation was supported only when the EL3 level was enabled. To configure the exception level, the ARM64_CURRENT_EL parameter can be used, based on which the applied register (vbar_el1, vbar_el2 or vbar_el3) is selected.
  • The smmstoretool utility supports ROM processing.
  • The implementation of the lzma algorithm on 64-bit systems allows reading in blocks of 8 bytes, which speeds up the decompression of compressed data.
  • Updated firmware components: amd_blobs, arm-trusted-firmware and intel-microcode.
  • Updated versions of build tools: LLVM 17.0.6, CMake 3.28.3, binutils 2.42.
  • Updated payload component based on U-Boot 2024.4. Added options to the edk2-based payload component in Kconfig to support the LAPIC timer and the UFS file system.

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