PSPTool Is a Swiss Army Knife for the Firmware of the AMD Secure Processor

Re:PSPTool Is a Swiss Army Knife for the Firmware of the AMD... by p_l on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @07:45PM (#20110208)

Major parts of the firmware were licensed, I assume for time-to-market reasons. Some of the license issues are also AFAIK due to how, somehow, we let entertainment industry strangle hold us - both ME and PSP now have code involved in setting up "protected av path" which is queried by streaming services et al - and if it's not found, you don't get to play 4k media (at least, afaik, with Netflix, it's 4k).

AMD could release a friendlier version but it would not be able to do what majoroty of the market expects it to do.

n.b. there are license-built cpus that have alternative firmware in PSP, but it's also closed and they are not really available on open market.

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Re:PSPTool Is a Swiss Army Knife for the Firmware of the AMD... by StudentStuff on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @07:52PM (#20110250)

AMD doesn't have the code nor the documentation from ARM to release a minimal PSP, and any attempt by them to do so will end with an injunction against AMD selling processors with TrustZone embedded, meaning they will have a yearlong gap before they can retool and start shipping any PSP-less processors (lead times on silicon changes are loooong).

Had AMD not been broke prior to the launch of Zen, they would have likely built their PSP in house, but they were so desperate to stay alive that they sold the 1st gen Zen CPU designs to a Chinese joint venture for $200 million (which kept AMD from bankruptcy).

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