Tag: POWER8

IBM Monacle and PowerVM firmware updates

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

[…]Under the Hood of Power Firmware Maintenance

The Service Processor of the server is running an embedded operating system with complex power firmware applications running on it; one of which is an application responsible for handling code updates. […]

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en_us#!/wiki/Power%20Systems/page/Monocle%20Patch%20Management

Talos FlexVer technology -vs- Evil Maids

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

Talos has a new post on their use of FPGAs on their OpenPower-based workstation.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptor-computing-systems/talos-secure-workstation/updates/talos-fpga-functions-and-responsibilities-part-2

https://firmwaresecurity.com/2016/09/02/talos-secure-workstation-coreboot-power8/

 

Talos Secure Workstation: coreboot + POWER8

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

New potential product on CrowdSupply with a NICE set of features (…and I wonder how secure it will be):

* Blob-free operation
* Fully libre (open-source) IBM OPAL primary firmware w/ PetitBoot interface
* Fully libre (open-source) OpenBMC secondary (IPMI / OoBM) firmware
* NO signing keys preventing firmware modification

https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptorcs/talos

Learning OpenPOWER firmware

~ hucktech ~ Leave a comment

A few days ago, I blogged about AMI joining OpenPOWER. Recently, there’s been some other activity in OpenPOWER.

IBM just announced SuperVessel, an OpenPOWER-based cloud for developers:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/47082.wss
https://ptopenlab.com/cloudlabconsole/index.html
http://openpowerfoundation.org/press-releases/openpower-accelerates-open-innovation-with-new-member-products-and-free-development-cloud/

It appears the source code to the OpenPOWER firmware was released about a year ago. Luckily, some others have been blogging on OpenPOWER firmware already:
http://openpowerfoundation.org/press-releases/occ-firmware-code-is-now-open-source/
http://jk.ozlabs.org/blog/post/159/customising-openpower-firmware/
https://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2014/07/17/openpower-firmware-up-on-github/
https://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2014/12/23/more-openpower-firmware-code-released-occ/

I’m just learning about the OpenPOWER community, it’s been years since I’ve written PowerPC assembly, and that was OS-level stuff, I am not aware of current OpenPOWER firmware technology. I probably won’t have a lot of time to post blog entries next week, but but I’ll have some more on OpenPOWER firmware in future blog posts.