AMD Embedded commits to open source BIOS coreboot

AMD's Embedded Solutions division has announced a roadmap for its future use of coreboot, the open source BIOS, in a blog posting by Kevin Tanguay, senior product marketing manager in the division. Coreboot, previously known as LinuxBIOS, is a Free Software project which set out to replace the proprietary BIOS firmware found in most computers.

According to Tanguay, AMD Embedded Solutions is committed to supporting coreboot "for all future products on the roadmap", with AMD's upcoming "Llano" APUs next to receive support. It has recently released coreboot for AMD's Opteron 4100 and is planning on releasing support for the Opteron 6100 "in the not too distant future". It says that once support for the AMD 785E/DB8xx chipsets is released, all current embedded processors and chipsets will have coreboot support.

AMD Embedded Solutions says it has "gained a great appreciation for the value of coreboot to our ecosystem" and has "come to realize that coreboot is useful in a myriad of applications and markets, even beyond what was originally considered". The company is working on developing support for new coreboot features beyond basic boot support and initialisation, such as Power Management and Boot To Windows. The company plans to use coreboot to allow its Embedded G-Series APUs to efficiently make use of the S3 (save-to-RAM) power saving mode which is useful for set-top boxes and other appliances.

See also:

• The Open Source BIOS is Ten, an interview with the coreboot developers from 2009.
• coreboot boots Windows 7 Beta, a report from The H.
• Universal BIOS Flash programmer for Linux, BSD and more, a report from The H.

(djwm)