The project coreboot has officially presented the release of version 24.05, which aims to develop a free alternative to proprietary firmware and BIOS. The project’s code is distributed under the GPLV2 license and has undergone 722 changes in this latest version, with the involvement of 131 developers.
The main changes in Coreboot 24.05 include:
- Announced stable support for 64-bit assemblies in Coreboot. Support for 2 processors (Power9 and RISC-V) and 25 platforms has been implemented. Additionally, support has been added for various motherboards such as AMD Birmanplus, Asrock Z97 Extreme6, Dell Optiplex models, Framework Azalea, HP Pro 3500, Lenovo Thinkcentre models, Raptor Computing Systems Talos II, and SiFive HiFive Unmatched.
- 17 boards are now supported on devices with Chrome OS or Google servers. However, support for two motherboards – Intel Alderlake-M RVP and Intel Alderlake-M RVP C Chrome EC – has been removed. The SOC IBM/Power9 and SiFive/Fu740 have been updated, and multiple TPM drivers are now compilable to provide support for both TPM 1.X and TPM 2.x specifications.
- For ARM64 architecture systems, support has been added for execution using exception levels EL1, EL2, and EL3. Previously, only the EL3 level was supported. The SMMStoretool utility now supports ROM processing, and the implementation of the LZMA algorithm on 64-bit systems has been improved to accelerate the reading of compressed data blocks.
- Various firmware components and assembly tools have been updated in Coreboot 24.05, including updated support for LLVM, CMAKE, binutils, and the U-Boot 2024 Payload-component. Additionally, enhancements have been made in the EDK2 Payload component to support the Lapic timer and the UFS file system.
/Reports, release notes, official announcements.