On Monday, 9 March 2020 18:08:54 GMT Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2020-03-09, Mark Knecht <[email protected]> wrote: > > Would that be the consensus of the group here? > > After decades of buying AMD, over the past 5 years or so all my > machines gradually shifted to Intel. > > So you can probably bet _that's_ not what you want...
My thoughts on the same topic: I have not seen *laptop* OEMs offering BIOS/UEFI firmware updates (which would include any applicable CPU microcode updates) for any longer than 18 months from the day of releasing their laptops onto the market. Desktop MoBo OEMs are usually better, I've received firmware updates on ASUS MoBos for 5 years or so, with continuous improvements on stability and performance. If the laptop's MoBo firmware is flash-able with coreboot you're in (partial) luck. You still need microcode binary blobs and for these you are at the mercy of the CPU manufacturers. With the Intel debacle over the last couple of years I realised their interest to keeping us as customers is limited to < 5 years. Beyond that they expect us to throw our PCs in the recycling bin and buy their latest offering, which errm ... hold on! o_O As we just found out Intel's latest ROM offering is compromised straight off the production line and given their prior form I wouldn't think they would rush to recall and replace their borked hardware any time soon. Are AMD that much better? They probably are, but not by much. Both Intel and AMD are now only offering CPU/APUs with embedded OOB coprocessors (ME/PSP) and many of the vulnerabilities revealed over the last few years are caused by these backdoors at the heart of the PC. Since I don't feel comfortable running a machine designed to be controlled/ controllable remotely before my OS of choice has even booted up, I am not keen on spending my money with either of these corporates. At some point I'll look at saving up for a POWER9 workstation, which at least runs coreboot, but I have no solution at this stage for a laptop and not much hope Intel or AMD are going to change their design policy anytime soon.
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