It's probably easier and more likely that software crackers will patch out the TPM requirement and make pirate versions of Windows 11 that install without it.

Emulating a TPM at the hardware level is possible but too much work when you can just buy the chips themselves--they aren't some magic unobtanium locked down thing, for example: https://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/trusted-platfor...

The problem is to get an old system to use it you'd have to also modify its bios to make it aware of the TPM (and figure out how to get access to the phsyical bus the TPM needs to interface with the motherboard). There is a lot of reverse engineering and work to do that sort of thing.

> Emulating a TPM at the hardware level is possible but too much work

good for us that amd does it for free, huh? https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/pro-security (fTPM)

Where do the keys get strored? Flash in the CPU? UEFI variables? A second flash chip on the motherboard?

it depends amd mostly uses its psp (platform security processor) of course security depends on amd's enclave. it basically uses ARM TrustZone, microsoft explained it in a paper: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/... so the internal storage is eMMC with RPMB and a hardware fuse

As long as it's not validated via the unique manufacturers key in the TPM it's possible. Any other software/website will assume you have a working TPM if you are running Win11 and will likely break however so the experience will be somewhat unusable.

Outside of the native OS modules using it for security (e.g. Windows Hello) I can't see many apps having a use for TPM let alone breaking. Perhaps DRM content will move towards using it at some point but it's always been a circus to get high tier DRM solutions to validate on Windows anyways, most just fallback to low validation with lower quality streams as is.

If you don't think 'rightsholders' will jump on this like a fly on dung then you're naive. Everyone from Netflix to Getty Images to Adobe has been waiting for this.

As I said, "Perhaps DRM content will move towards using it at some point but it's always been a circus to get high tier DRM solutions to validate on Windows anyways". They may flock to it but just like SGX + HDCP 2.2 + IME is needed for Netflix to ship 4k to your PC it just means they still won't ship 4k to your PC unless you have a ridiculous set of requirements.

As far as "getty images" websites don't have access to TPM and the DRM available for video (e.g. Widevine) is both more limited than the native stack (i.e. already can't be used for tier 1/2 DRM content) and for video only. Could the entire browser landscape change in the next few years to enable that? Sure, but it has nothing to do with TPM on Windows.

I'd say we're already seeing things go in that direction.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Plugins/Flash_to_HT...

From what I've heard W11 in a VM won't require a TPM to install. So worst case install it to your HDD from VirtualBox and see what happens booting on bare metal?

I installed the preview the other day and yes it works just fine under VirtualBox