For those still running a 1st Generation Xeon Scalable “Skylake” era server, support for it within the open-source Coreboot firmware may continue to improve all these years later thanks to firmware consulting firm 9elements.
At the recent Open Compute Project Global Summit, 9elements Cyber Security announced they are going to maintain the Intel Xeon-SP Gen1 code within Coreboot and continue to enhance that platform support.
Rather than letting that Xeon Scalable Skylake era code rot within Coreboot and potentially be removed now that Intel’s sights are well beyond 1st Gen Xeon Scalable, 9elements is taking over maintaining the code. One of their target Xeon Scalable platforms of interest is the WiWynn Tioga Pass dual socket OCP 2OU/3N server.
As part of seeing the 1st Gen Xeon Scalable support in Coreboot going strong, this week 9elements engineers posted 34 new Coreboot patches for enhancing the platform support. There are a number of common Intel Xeon Scalable 1st Gen improvements as well as some specific to Tioga Pass.
Nice to see the support continue to not only be maintained but improved upon for these aging platforms, albeit they are getting up there in age and this generation of Skylake Xeon processors are the most vulnerable to all the security vulnerabilities out there and so most users will be best off upgrading if at all possible. In any event, kudos to 9elements on their continued Coreboot contributions.
