First time posting here, sup!
I got a laptop running Coreboot (Framework Chromebook). After watching Wendell’s video about Optane’s latency superiority, out of curiosity I decided to try running Intel H20 on it since it was quite cheap to toy around.
I know that it’s only supported on certain laptop (and not even available as a retail unit), but I saw the option to enable hybrid storage mode within Coreboot. Since people have been modifying their BIOS to support advanced bifurcation options, I’ve decided to give it a shot. However, none of my changes seems to be working.
What I’ve tried:
- Simply adding a line to enable
HybridStorageMode(you could see this documented on Intel’s FSP GitHub repo) - Pointing
CpuRootportUsedForHybridStorageto the same PCIe root port as the M.2 port (this doesn’t appear in the FSP docs but present in the header file) - Turning PCIe root port 11 on, since most mainboard seems to use them for their Optane.
So my question is really twofold:
- Is it theoretically possible to make these Optane drives work just by changing the laptop’s BIOS / firmware? Or is there a special configuration of the 4x PCIe lane topology that the board manufacturer must configure? I saw a post in this forum in which the author splits an x8 slot into a 2 x2 slots but I figure it wouldn’t be necessary for an x4 slot.
- If it is possible, does anyone have any experience modifying Coreboot’s mainboard file in order to fully detect both parts of these Optane hybrid SSDs?
I have some experience when it comes to C and Linux so I could compile and flash modifications without worrying about losing the ability to boot, but I’m a beginner when it comes to embedded system stuff like Coreboot. I’m being particularly cautious about power and TDP related settings since it might fry the hardware…
Any suggestions would be appreciated!