The 3mdeb firmware consulting firm recently hosted another one of their virtual events about open-source firmware and beer. There they talked about AMD’s ongoing work around OpenSIL for open-source CPU silicon initialization. In addition, they shared work on an experimental port of OpenSIL back to Zen 1 processors.
AMD began prototyping OpenSIL for Zen 4 processors and have been continuing to experiment with the newer Ryzen/EPYC processors. We still are awaiting the Zen 5 proof-of-concept code that was supposed to be out in Q4’2024 but so far has yet to be made public. But in an interesting twist, 3mdeb has demonstrated bringing OpenSIL back to aging Zen 1 hardware with an EPYC Embedded platform. In particular, their OpenSIL experimental back-port was using an AMD EPYC 3251 processor on a Supermicro M11SDV board.
It is important to note though that it’s a very limited port with no display output working, among other missing features. In any event an interesting technical achievement. The latest indications from AMD have been that they are aiming for OpenSIL to reach production status around Zen 6 timeframe, but there are no indications they are planning to work on older Zen platforms to raise up the level of support for anything beyond the proof-of-concept state.
In any event those interested in 3mdeb’s work around AMD OpenSIL or to learn more can find their latest vPub recording below. Meanwhile it would be great if there was a status update out of AMD around the Zen 5 OpenSIL PoC and if any of their roadmap plans have shifted as we approach Zen 6 next year.
