Update: coreboot conference in Europe, October 2015

UPDATE: Invitations published, venue is decided, few bed+breakfast rooms at the venue are still available

TL;DR: coreboot conference Oct 9-11, more info at http://coreboot.org/Coreboot_conference_Bonn_2015

 

Dear coreboot developers, users and interested parties,

we are currently trying to organize a coreboot conference and developer meeting in October 2015 in Germany.

This is not intended to be a pure developer meeting, we also hope to reach out to manufacturers of processors, chipsets, mainboards and servers/laptops/tablets/desktops with an interest in coreboot and the possibilities it offers.

My plan (which is not final yet) is to have the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) in Germany host the conference in Bonn, Germany. As a national cyber security authority, the goal of the BSI is to promote IT security in Germany. For this reason, the BSI has funded coreboot development in the past for security reasons.

The preliminary plans are to coordinate the exact date of the conference to be before or after Embedded Linux Conference Europe, scheduled for October 5-7 in Dublin, Ireland. Planned duration is 3 days. This means we can either use the time window from Thursday Oct 1 to Sunday Oct 4, or from Thursday Oct 8 to Monday Oct 12. The former has the advantage of having cheaper hotel rooms available in Bonn, while the latter has the advantage of avoiding Oct 3, a national holiday in Germany (all shops closed). UPDATE: Preliminary dates are Friday Oct 9 to Sunday Oct 11. The doodle has been updated accordingly. Thursday and Monday could be filled with some cultural attractions if desired.

ATTENTION vendors/manufacturers: If your main interest is forging business relationships and/or strategic coordination and you want to skip the technical workshops and soldering, we’ll try make sure there is one outreach day of talks, presentations and discussions on a regular business day. Please indicate that with “(strategic)” next to your name in the doodle linked below.

If you wonder about how to reach Bonn, there are three options available by plane:
The closest is Cologne Airport (CGN), 30 minutes by bus to Bonn main station.
Next is Düsseldorf Airport (DUS), 1 hour by train to Bonn main station.
The airport with most international destinations is Frankfurt Airport (FRA), 2.5 hours by train to Bonn main station.
There’s the option to travel by train as well. Bonn is reachable by high-speed train (ICE), and other high-speed train stations are reasonably close (30 minutes).

What I’m looking for right now is a rough show of hands who’d like to attend so I can book a conference venue. I’d also like feedback on which weekend would be preferable for you. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me directly <c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006@gmx.net> or our mailing list <coreboot@coreboot.org>.

Please enter your participation abilities in the doodle below:
http://doodle.com/bw52xs4fc7pxte6d

Regards,
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger

Coreboot in shipping products

We are starting to see coreboot in more shipping products this summer and I expect even more in the fall. The exciting thing is that coreboot is becoming a piece of technology that vendors are starting to advertise. A recent example is the Portwell PCS-8277:

PORTWELL ANNOUNCES REVOLUTIONARY IN-VEHICLE PC
WITH THE BOOT SPEED OF AN APPLIANCE New PCS-8277 telematics system based on Coreboot® technology with HD graphics processing engine 

I think that we are starting to see vendors and customers becoming more knowledgeable about what is going into their products and how coreboot is an advantage in many situations. I hope to see more announcements in the coming months.

GSoC 2011: flashrom part 5 – Dear Intel

As mentioned in my GSoC recap, Carl-Daniel and i have sent a letter to Intel to get more information regarding the descriptor section and unlocking the ME flash protection (my official GSoC main project). It was sent about 3 weeks ago (2011-07-29). No reply was received so far. This is the whole message we have sent them: Continue reading GSoC 2011: flashrom part 5 – Dear Intel