Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

Re:Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB by NablaSquaredG on Sunday January 16, 2022 @02:23PM (#29959030)

As far as I know, Intel does exactly that (or at least allows vendors to do that, I think HP does that)

IIRC, in Intel's case, the chipset has the vendor keys burned into it. This is not an issue, as the chipset is not a part you would remove from the board and use elsewhere.

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Re:Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB by amluto on Sunday January 16, 2022 @02:56PM (#29959339)

Intel’s or AMD’s assistance is not needed at all. There is a rather boring flash chip connected by SPI to the CPU and/or PCH. One could interpose a microcontroller that verifies whatever it pleases on that SPI link.

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Re:Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB by my123 on Sunday January 16, 2022 @03:08PM (#29959450)

That’s the approach used by the Apple T2. On the Intel side, it’s the chipset soldered on the motherboard which does that verification, so CPU swapping isn’t affected.

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Re:Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB by my123 on Sunday January 16, 2022 @02:39PM (#29959174)

In Intel’s case the ME as a whole is on the PCH.

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