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AMD is preparing to replace its AGESA microcode architecture with an open-source alternative called openSIL, beginning with Zen 6. Meanwhile, 3mbdeb, a Polish open-source consulting firm, has revealed that initial efforts to adapt openSIL for a consumer Zen 5 motherboard are in progress.
The MSI B850-P Pro is the board that 3mbdeb selected. If you're into this sort of thing, you can now try out openSIL ahead of its arrival with AMD's next-gen CPUs, though the company cautions that this is a "proof of concept" that is "not intended for Production use." Efforts to implement openSIL plus Coreboot on the MSI board build upon prior work involving the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1, a server board engineered for AMD's EPYC 9005 series CPUs. AMD released the openSIL initialization code for the aforementioned Turin server chips significantly earlier than it did for its desktop Phoenix CPUs. Consequently, the B850-P Pro is gaining from the development efforts already invested in the aforementioned Gigabyte board.
Silicon firmware such as openSIL and AGESA ensure that critical components connected to the motherboard are functional and initialize essential elements like the CPU, RAM, and chipset. Without these microcode platforms, your computer wouldn’t start up. They function as components of the broader firmware stack, bridging the silicon to the host firmware, like UEFI, or here, Coreboot.
OpenSIL marks a significant advancement in how code is analyzed and protected against cyberattacks compared to AMD's previous AGESA platform. AGESA's primary issue is that its code is proprietary, blocking users from examining the firmware for security purposes, debugging, or any other reasons. With openSIL, AMD has enhanced this by releasing the new firmware as open-source. According to AMD, openSIL will also be more scalable and lighter than AGESA, while supporting various host firmwares. AGESA is built around UEFI as the primary firmware.
There’s little point in running openSIL right now if you have an MSI B850-P Pro. Coreboot's early support for openSIL on the B850-P Pro remains under development, and the board has not yet been officially added to Coreboot's supported devices list. But it’s a solid choice for developers and enthusiasts to experiment with openSIL to explore its internals and observe how AMD has improved its design over AGESA.
