Seems AMD and Intel may be feeling the pressure from Arm? Today both companies announced the forming of a new x86 ecosystem advisory group to help shape the future of the platform.
It's not just them though they've pulled in Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux) and Tim Sweeney (Epic Games), along with companies including: Broadcom, Dell, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP Inc., Lenovo, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat as founding members.
From the press release:
“We are on the cusp of one of the most significant shifts in the x86 architecture and ecosystem in decades – with new levels of customization, compatibility and scalability needed to meet current and future customer needs,” said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO. “We proudly stand together with AMD and the founding members of this advisory group, as we ignite the future of compute, and we deeply appreciate the support of so many industry leaders.”
“Establishing the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group will ensure that the x86 architecture continues evolving as the compute platform of choice for both developers and customers,” said Lisa Su, AMD Chair and CEO. “We are excited to bring the industry together to provide direction on future architectural enhancements and extend the incredible success of x86 for decades to come.”
Their plan is to come together to find new ways to expand the x86 ecosystem with their intended outcomes to be:
- Enhancing customer choice and compatibility across hardware and software, while accelerating their ability to benefit from new, cutting-edge features.
- Simplifying architectural guidelines to enhance software consistency and standardize interfaces across x86 product offerings from Intel and AMD.
- Enabling greater and more efficient integration of new capabilities into operating systems, frameworks and applications.
More in the press releases: AMD / Intel.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: PeakI understand the rest, but why in the world is Sweeney involved?Sweeney has a bunch of lawsuits on his name that clearly indicate he cares a lot about competing on embedded platforms and since that is what they're trying to achieve his power and experience could actually help.
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Quoting: CyborgZetaShould've been done years ago. I, for one, do not want an ARM takeover. Locked bootloaders, and unable to easily install whatever Linux distro I want. No thank you.
It's strange about ARM it's both the absolute pinnacle of software freedom and the absolute worst.
Thanks to getting completely roasted by the DOJ Microsoft enforces the freedom to switch.
The GPL enforces that one technically on ARM too, but it doesn't have as powerful backers, so it's a lot more spotty there.
I really hope the SFC vs Vizio case ends favorably, so non-gpl copyright holders can start suing.
I also hope Google loses its anti-trust fights, so the DOJ can achieve the same for them.
Contrary to x86 there is the option to run an ARM device on completely FOSS firmware, but it requires specific processors.
It doesn't have as much invasive ME firmware.
"Sigh"
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Quoting: PublicNuisanceSo the companies that screw me over with Intel ME and AMD PSP are joining forces ? Consider me wanting to get off X86 to RiscV or Power9 even more than before.
yes it is popular to scare people that have no clue on how things work that these are somehow secret spy things when they in reality are nothing but managing devices for enterprise IT departments (just like how we in the server space have full on BMC cards instead).
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QuoteIt's not just them though they've pulled in Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux) and Tim Sweeney (Epic Games)
those two on the same board isnt something i expected to see.
QuoteGoogle, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP Inc., Lenovoomg, HP name is anoying to write/read in this context...
i mean it include an comma and an dot in the name...
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Linux_Rocks 2 days ago
Quoting: Linux_RocksMan, you can tell that Intel is in trouble if this is happening. This is like Microsoft with Xbox and them trying to act all friendly towards other platforms. If Intel was beating AMD hand over fist again or if Xbox was doing good still. None of this would be happening and they'd be saying fuck off to everyone else. lolIntel is laying off 1,300 workers in Oregon.
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Quoting: RandomizedKirbyTree47Quoting: Linux_RocksMan, you can tell that Intel is in trouble if this is happening. This is like Microsoft with Xbox and them trying to act all friendly towards other platforms. If Intel was beating AMD hand over fist again or if Xbox was doing good still. None of this would be happening and they'd be saying fuck off to everyone else. lol
I think it's less about Intel beating or not beating AMD: in sales for new laptops running Windows, Intel is still winning by a lot. I think it's about Intel fearing ARM.
You can't really go by sales of new laptops. Intel pays their OEM's to not build laptops with AMD processors. If you go to a car dealer and the salesman says, you can have a car with any color you want as long as it's green. Then some economist runs the numbers and determines Green is the most popular color by a wide margin. Intel used to have awesome, Intel Inside, commercials. It was exciting to buy Intel. Now you go to a big box store and buy a laptop, statistically you'll walk out with an Intel processor. Intel was dying a slow death when I was working there. At that time they were signing deals to fabricate chips that had ARM cores and not Intel cores. That would have never been thinkable historically. And of course they eventually split off the foundry business from the chip design part of Intel. Tell me Intel has relied on the power of their purse for too long, without telling me they've relied on the power of their purse for too long.
Don't get me started on the Microsoft Tax.
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Quoting: PeakI understand the rest, but why in the world is Sweeney involved?
You can have TS at your backyard BBQ party as long as you say something nice about EGS. 🙃
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Quoting: F.UltraQuoting: PublicNuisanceSo the companies that screw me over with Intel ME and AMD PSP are joining forces ? Consider me wanting to get off X86 to RiscV or Power9 even more than before.
yes it is popular to scare people that have no clue on how things work that these are somehow secret spy things when they in reality are nothing but managing devices for enterprise IT departments (just like how we in the server space have full on BMC cards instead).
ME is also what powers fTPM, bios signing and PlayReady drm.
These are all used to restrict your freedom to use your device how you like right now.
ME has been used by Israelian hackers to hack devices.
The procedure for using it requires you to receive an identification key from Intel based on information Intel generated, there is no indication that you can lock Intel out.
Maybe the American government isn't using it as a back door right here, right now, but the only reason we have to believe that is Intels' word.
ME is the reason modern devices can't install coreboot.
Also if it was just for remote management they would've put not such ridiculous amount of effort to counter all the efforts that have been done to remove it, because this is how it went: first you could simply remove the hardware, than they patched that and you could only remove the software, than they patched that and you couldn't, but someone found the secret government switch to turn it off and than they patched that and now the we have clean room reverse engineer it to turn it off without bricking our devices.
Also I'm not an It department and Intel knows that, because they sell a different bussiness and consumer line.
This is a feature they know I will never need, but they added it anyway.
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Quoting: LoudTechieQuoting: F.UltraQuoting: PublicNuisanceSo the companies that screw me over with Intel ME and AMD PSP are joining forces ? Consider me wanting to get off X86 to RiscV or Power9 even more than before.
yes it is popular to scare people that have no clue on how things work that these are somehow secret spy things when they in reality are nothing but managing devices for enterprise IT departments (just like how we in the server space have full on BMC cards instead).
ME is also what powers fTPM, bios signing and PlayReady drm.
These are all used to restrict your freedom to use your device how you like right now.
ME has been used by Israelian hackers to hack devices.
The procedure for using it requires you to receive an identification key from Intel based on information Intel generated, there is no indication that you can lock Intel out.
Maybe the American government isn't using it as a back door right here, right now, but the only reason we have to believe that is Intels' word.
ME is the reason modern devices can't install coreboot.
Also if it was just for remote management they would've put not such ridiculous amount of effort to counter all the efforts that have been done to remove it, because this is how it went: first you could simply remove the hardware, than they patched that and you could only remove the software, than they patched that and you couldn't, but someone found the secret government switch to turn it off and than they patched that and now the we have clean room reverse engineer it to turn it off without bricking our devices.
Also I'm not an It department and Intel knows that, because they sell a different bussiness and consumer line.
This is a feature they know I will never need, but they added it anyway.
The PlayReady drm does not use Intel ME, it uses SGX which is a completely different thing. fTPM exists only on AMD so again not Intel ME. Nor does it do bios signing.
Various hackers around the world have used every single piece of hw and sw to hack devices so not sure why Intel ME should be singled out for that reason. And for that matter I cannot find any information at all about anyone having hacked Intel ME, Israeli or otherwise, is this you confusing this with something else again or do you have any links?
You also seem a bit confused about coreboot, there are no Intel ME mechanism to prevent the installation of coreboot. The only connection between Intel ME and coreboot is that since Intel ME have it's firmware stored in the BIOS, Intel ME is disabled by coreboot since coreboot does not contain the necessary firmware.
Intel ME have never been a separate piece of hw, it have always been builtin to the cpu and it really have to be in order for it to function the way it's supposed to work.
I think that you are confusing Intel ME with TPM here since TPM started out as a separate chip and was then moved into the CPU after it was discovered that the connection between the TPM and the CPU could be eavesdropped and manipulated in a way that rendered TPM useless.
Intel ME is builtin to every single cpu since #1 Intel does not know which specific cpu a business tends to purchase for their office machines that their IT department wants to perform remote administration on and #2 it would be extremely expensive to have two separate chip fabs for non-ME and have-ME line of CPU:s of the same core design.
I would hope that people would understand that IF intel decided to put some hidden backdoor into their processors that they would have done that _hidden_ and not in a piece of hw that they openly advertise (and with complete guides on how to use like this one: Getting Started with Intel® Active Management Technology. Also to date not a single person have been able to see any Intel ME trying to communicate with the outside world (aka phone home), had this ever occurred you would not have missed it since it would have been screamed from rooftops.
Last edited by F.Ultra on 18 October 2024 at 9:24 pm UTC
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