AMD product responded positively about open sourcing PSP in Ryzen, Edward Snowden picked up on it

Hey, I wanted to post about this because I think it should be included in a video.. I think this is pretty important. Basically I want this shouted from the rooftops and don't want it to go unseen or disappear in obscurity, because it's a big deal.. and means good things for the end user.

AMD did an AMA on Reddit today. One of the highest rated questions was regarding AMD's Platform Security Processor (PSP), similar to Intel's Intel Management Engine (IME)... which has been the subject of major security and user privacy issues.

The user asked AMD to consider open sourcing the code for it. The AMD CPU Product manager ended up giving a very genuine response and said they would discuss it internally.

That same AMD employee ended up posting about it on Twitter and Edward Snowden picked up on it. It goes to show that at least that one AMD employee did in fact take it seriously, and getting Snowden behind it is the icing on the cake.

Anyone who knows what this all means should know it's a big deal.

@wendell


Also... totally off topic but while I was trying to find my way to the INBOX.deb (love the new extension lol) subforum.. I found a tiny bug in the forum that has been overlooked, hovering over "INBOX.deb" shows mention of tek syndicate/pistol/logan/etc:

' http://i.imgur.com/uhphykC.png

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I believe this is lip service for the moment, but I hope I'm wrong.

Reason I say that is that a lot of the IP to do it right and make the libre boot people happy will require AMD to lean on outside vendors for "trusted computing" and the arm that powers that.

I just don't see those vendors giving up their goose that is laying them loads of golden eggs at the moment.

Would AMD support an open alternative that runs on the board management engine though? Maybe. But

Lip service or no lip service, I would like to keep the discussion going.. keep people pressuring AMD about it. And at least continue to educate the public about what PSP/IME is and let them know AMD has acknowledged it.

And I honestly don't even see it that way. The AMD employee responded not once but twice to the same question to reassure him that the question was going to be considered, and then later posted about it on his personal twitter. To me that's going above and beyond for simple lip service.. especially for such a technical question that most users don't understand.

Whatever the case, it's newsworthy, I think.

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Fyi, AMD James responded again today

Thanks for the feedback. Please believe me that this has CEO level attention and AMD is investigating the steps and resources necessary to support this. It is not the work of a minute, so please bear with us as we define what we can do.

Definitely not just lip service ;)

@wendell

The problem tho is that AMD doesn't own the rights management platform in question. I hope they can come up with a workable solution that benefits everyone though.

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At least it's something. Even if it fails, that doesn't stop us trying again.

They've essentially opened up their GPU drivers, far more than nvidia, who expected that?

The problem with a lot of these companies is there just so big it can be hard to change anything at all. But the fact that that question was the top question on their ama and that they are at the very least putting the question forward to higher up, is better than nothing at all.

I've seen a lot of replies saying it's just lip service, nothing will happen, mainly from people who've done nothing about it. It's the same as always, people don't try because they don't think it will get anywhere, it doesn't go anywhere because no one tried.

That definitely gives me some hope...And even the fact that they are acknowledging it is interesting. If they accommodate sth like that for the PSP code it would be a great improvement.

But i will believe it when i see it.