coreboot 4.1

We're happy to announce that today coreboot v4.1 has been released.

Besides being totally redesigned, it is super-fast, handles almost every 
existing chipset, opens our codebase to contributors without lowlevel C skills 
and is generally something to be celebrated. Not to mention the environmental 
friendliness and promotion of world peace.

Features include, but are not limited to:

    * LARROMFS-NG, allowing code and configuration storage in the ROM without 
      risking accidental reflashes. With its clean and simple design, you can 
      store hundreds of different file types easily in the ROM, each of them 
      being handled by a different plugin. 

    * SQL-based chipset programming. Gone are the days where you had to 
      differentiate between accessing PCI regs via struct device, u32 or 
      device_t variants. Now you can use statements like: 
      SELECT val_32bit FROM pci WHERE buslocation="badc:0f:fe.e" AND configbytenumber=00;
      or the even simpler
      SELECT val_32bit FROM pci NATURAL JOIN configbytes WHERE buslocation="badc:0f:fe.e" AND configbytename="Vendor ID";
      Changing PCI config space follows similar rules.

    * A SQL interpreter in coreboot which handles all chipset code. This SQL 
      interpreter combines the clarity of obfuscated FORTH with the speed of 
      unoptimized SQL. 

    * Self-modifying code! As we all know, self-modifying code has less bugs 
      because any given bug disappears after the code has been modified often 
      enough. Plus, this is a good way to exercise CPUs to detect hardware 
      problems more easily. 

    * Fancy linker scripts. LARROMFS-NG is the next generation archiving 
      solution for all our needs because it does not rely on inherently 
      bug-prone C code. LARROMFS-NG is implemented as a really big and 
      all-encompassing set of linker scripts which can even link new linkers 
      together which reinterpret these linker scripts. 

    * New plugin architecture. Coreboot v4.1 will faithfully execute any and 
      all code presented on any device attached to the board. Due to that, 
      trojanizing computers becomes a piece of cake, freeing up the precious 
      time of the intelligence community for more pressing problems like world 
      peace. 

    * Multi-language error messages. Although chinese error messages were a bit 
      difficult to store in 7-bit ASCII, we created a lossy compression scheme 
      which will hardly ever insult users by accident. 

    * An animated splash screen with sound. This was one of the most wanted 
      features in the past, but coreboot was too fast for anyone to notice the 
      splash screen. Now we have a mandatory delay of 20 seconds, enough for 
      short movies and even some tacked on ads. 

    * Ultra-secure Suspend-to-RAM (S3) for people worried of RAM readout (the 
      "cold boot attacks" with frozen RAM). During every suspend cycle, 
      coreboot completely wipes the RAM and will resume to a data-free system. 

    * WORN technology. This is shorthand for Write Once, Read Never. Others 
      practice that coding tradition by accident, but we have perfected it as 
      an art. 

    * Double use technology. Most people think of weapons when they hear this, 
      but it's more simple and a lot more environmentally friendly. Your CPU 
      will not only calculate stuff, coreboot can also switch off the fans on 
      demand to make sure the CPU will fry your omelette exactly right. 

    * Less-than-zero boot times. Ever had the problem that your boot took too 
      long? We have the simple solution: Once coreboot is finished with 
      initializing the hardware, it will set back your clock by 30 seconds. 
      Even with the mandatory 20 second delay for splash movies, you can finish 
      booting 9-10 seconds before you switched the machine on. 

    * Real life impact. With a less-than-zero boot time, time goes effectively 
      backwards. If you assemble a big enough cluster of coreboot machines, you 
      can undo the worst decisions of your life. 

As you can see, coreboot v4.1 is the best thing since the invention of sliced 
bread. It even makes firmware veterans spin in their graves to act as 
human-powered electricity generators (a nice environmental plus).


To limit the impact on the real world (especially due to the time machine 
properties), this coreboot version will only be available for download this 
April 1st.


Sincerely,
the coreboot team 
