// PHORONIX — LINUX & OPEN SOURCE
Running AMD openSIL + Coreboot On The First Available Ryzen AM5 Motherboard
Earlier this year the 3mdeb firmware consulting firm ported AMD openSIL CPU open-source silicon initialization library and Coreboot to an EPYC motherboard, the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1. Their next feat now achieved is bringing AMD openSIL and Coreboot to a desktop AMD Ryzen motherboard with their downstream Dasharo firmware solution. I have been running this alternative firmware on the MSI PRO B850P WiFi motherboard and it's been working out and performing well as an alternative to the closed-up motherboard firmware.
3mdeb has been porting their Dasharo firmware based on Coreboot and AMD openSIL over to the MSI B850P WiFi motherboard since the beginning of the year. Recently they published the first Dasharo builds and then began the upstreaming of support into openSIL and Coreboot of their work. In comparison, AMD's openSIL proof-of-concept ports to date have only targeted select internal reference motherboards and not any retail-available solution for end-users/enthusiasts.
For making the project fiscally sustainable, they are selling Dasharo pre-loaded on the MSI PRO B850P via the 3mdeb Webshop. You can purchase an assembled system built around this motherboard that will already arrive preloaded with this open-source firmware alternative. Given many are pursuing Dasharo/openSIL/Coreboot in the name of security, 3mdeb also offers tamper-proof sealing and more.
For the purposes of this testing, 3mdeb kindly provided the Dasharo release build for testing on an MSI PRO B850P motherboard that I had purchased for testing. With the 3mdeb Dasharo port to the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 you can flash to the Dasharo firmware via the BMC web interface. Or with 3mdeb's prior MSI Intel motherboard port you could use Flashrom for the desktop. For the MSI B850P WiFi, due to AMD ROM Armor protection preventing writes to the BIOS from the host operating system, Flashrom isn't possible. Thus for deploying it you either need an external programmer or at least you can use MSI FlashBIOS. With MSI FlashBIOS you just toss the image as MSI.ROM on an external flash drive into the designated USB port and then hit the FlashBIOS physical button when the system is powered off.
With MSI FlashBIOS it's thus quite easy to deploy Dasharo onto this motherboard. Though at first the system wasn't properly booting... Most of 3mdeb's usage has been via external programming. But thankfully after less than a day later, 3mdeb was able to figure out the issue that resulted in the flashing fail. With an updated image, after trying MSI FlashBIOS again it all just worked. So moving forwward the FlashBIOS experience going to Dasharo will hopefully be more reliable. In any case it was quite convenient being able to flash the Coreboot-based Dasharo using MSI FlashBIOS rather than needing to pull out an external programmer to program the BIOS chip or jump through other hoops.
From there it was off to the races with this MSI AMD Ryzen AM5 motherboard running off openSIL and the Coreboot base! After covering AMD's openSIL development for more than three years already, it was refreshing to finally see it running on a Ryzen consumer desktop motherboard albeit unofficially.
It is important to note though that while the MSI PRO B850P WiFi motherboard supports AMD Ryzen 7000 / 8000 / 9000 series CPUs, given the current limitations of the AMD openSIL proof-of-concept targeting Phoenix APUs, the range of supported CPUs is limited. Basically the likes of the Ryzen 7 8700G, Ryzen 5 8600G, and other Ryzen 8000 series Phoenix based parts. Hopefully AMD will update their PoC to support Ryzen 9000 series processors but for now this is sadly an openSIL limitation.
For my testing I was running a Ryzen 7 8700G processor with this MSI motherboard and it was working out well, just like the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 server testing with AMD 5th Gen EPYC "Turin" on Dasharo.