After Intel decided to part ways with the old BIOS firmware in favor of the UEFI interface in its newer motherboards, AMD also seems determined to follow a similar path for its upcoming Llano platforms, but the Sunnyvale based company will rely instead on the Coreboot technology.
The Coreboot project was started in the late 1999 as a lightweight, open source alternative to the proprietary BIOS firmware found in most computers.
Ever since the project was started, AMD has been one of its main contributors and has been actively trying to promote Coreboot in the server and embedded markets.
However, this is the first time that such a firmware will be used in consumer-orientated products, but AMD has no plans of stopping here as it apparently wants to implement the new technology in all of its upcoming platforms.
Outside of its faster boot times and advanced feature set, AMD also claims that Coreboot has a beneficial role in lowering the power consumption of its systems.
The first Llano chips with support for Coreboot are expected to be officially announced on June 1, when
AMD will release its Sabine platform that is targeting mainstream and high-performance notebook computers.
AMD's Llano APUs use the company's K10.5+/Husky x86 processor architecture and pair it together with a DirectX 11 compatible on-die GPU.
This can feature up to six SIMD engines with 80 stream
processors each and the GPU is also accompanied by an integrated dual-channel DDR3 memory controller, a PCI Express controller, up to 4MB of cache and select CPUs even pack AMD's Turbo Core 2.0 dynamic acceleration technology.
Sabine will be followed by the Lynx platform, that is comprised out of the
Llano desktop APUs and the Hudson D2 and Hudson D3 fusion controller hubs. Lynx is also expected to come with Coreboot support. (via
FudZilla)
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