Extremely disappointing.

Also the CES didn't say anything about the next Threadrippers. :(

They did tease the next Zen architecture but not much details sadly.

But having Microsoft-designed hardware as a backdoor in my system? Absolutely not.

boring_twenties

What if the backdoor is designed by Intel instead of Microsoft?

Spoiler alert, if you have any Intel CPU released after 2006-2008, you have one.

https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel

pdimitar

Oh I know. That's why I am moving to AMD gradually. But I hear they are not much better. Scary stuff, dude.

boring_twenties

AMD's PSP is pretty much the same thing.

In the past few years AMD has started including a BIOS option to disable it. However, I have never seen a convincing explanation of how exactly that option works. The only thing I know is that Linux complains about it at boot on my B450M (from 2019):

    Aug 30 23:52:07 kobold kernel: [    4.811829] ccp 0000:07:00.1: ccp: unable to access the device: you might be running a broken BIOS.
    Aug 30 23:52:07 kobold kernel: [    4.811831] ccp 0000:07:00.1: psp: unable to access the device: you might be running a broken BIOS.

Intel includes no such option, but on the other hand there is stuff like https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/. In the absense of any detailed information about how AMD'S PSP disable option actually works, I guess I would trust this a little more. However it requires getting your hands dirty, attaching a programmer directly to the chip (on the motherboard), and is not without risk.