For those who still do not know what the CoreBoot is, they should know that this is an open source alternative to the traditional Basic Input-Output System (BIOS) found on MS-DOS 80s PCs and has been replaced with UEFI (Unified Extensible ).

CoreBoot is also used as a base firmware for hardware initialization and boot coordination of the binary components that are necessary to initialize the CPU and the chiset.

The CoreBoot has not been very popular today, but lately this project has attracted the attention of many people including the NSA, who has allocated some developers to support the project.

A few days ago the developers of "9elements" made known through a blog post, the news of the porting of the CoreBoot code to the motherboard of the Supermicro X11SSH-TF server.

The changes are already included in the core code base of CoreBoot and will be included in the next major release. Supermicro X11SSH-TF is the first server motherboard based on the latest generation Intel Xeon processor used with CoreBoot.

In the words of the developers, the reason why the CoreBoot port was made to the board is as follows:

"The development of closed source firmware has been the standard for the electronics industry since its inception.
That did not change even when open source took off in other areas. Now, with changing use cases and strict security requirements, it is more important than ever to take open source firmware development to the next level."

Some features of this motherboard are:

• It is compatible with the Intel Xeon E3-1200 v5 processor; Supports 6th generation Intel Core i3 / Pentium / Celeron processors; Supports up to 80W TDP
• Memory: 4x DDRM DDR4-2133 / 1866/1600 288-pin slots, ECC, without buffer, maximum capacity of 64 GB
• Slots: 1x PCI-Express 3.0 x8 slot, 1x PCI-Express 3.0 x4 slot (runs on x2)
• SATA: 8x SATA3 ports, support RAID 0, 1, 5, 10
• Form factor: MicroATX, 9.6 x 9.6 inches / 24.4 x 24.4 cm

The project has advanced in order to improve the security of the server infrastructure and get rid of the patented components whose status cannot be controlled.

In addition to adding support for the board to CoreBoot, project participants also implemented support for TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 1.2 / 2.0 based on Intel ME and prepared a driver for the ASPEED 2400 SuperI / O controller, which performs the functions of BMC (Baseboard Management Controller).

To remotely control the board, the IPMI interface provided by the BMC AST2400 controller is provided, but to use IPMI, the original firmware must be installed in the BMC controller.

In addition the verified download functionality was also implemented and the superiotool utility added support AST2400 and inteltool support Intel Xeon E3-1200.

Undoubtedly, this is a step for the implementation of CoreBoot to continue making its way, since it is a lot of developers that will get their attention and will follow in the footsteps of the 9elements developers.