On a machine running an open-source operating system, the BIOS is not open source; even if it supports coreboot, binary blobs are required for booting. However, coreboot can now initialize DRAM on Intel Bay Trail SOCs. Mate Kukri explained this in his presentation at the Open Source Firmware Conference.
More than a decade old, Bay Trail was used only in low-performance mobile devices such as Chromebooks. DRAM initialization is difficult because the memory is not yet ready for use; reverse engineering of proprietary blobs that manufacturers did not document was carried out using the SerialICE debugger and the Unicorn Engine CPU emulator. The presentation focused less on the details of a single old SOC than on the broader use of this method. The recordings are expected to be published on the OFSC website.
Thanks to its open structure, coreboot can run in the processor cache and play DOOM before initializing RAM. Blob-free use requires hardware supported by Libreboot; today, finding compatible hardware may be more difficult than installing Libreboot.
Why it matters
The development is significant in terms of efforts to reduce dependence on proprietary and undocumented components in the hardware boot process. The reverse-engineering approach applied to Bay Trail raises not only the possibility of using a specific old SOC, but also a technical path that could be followed when examining similar closed firmware components. However, coreboot’s ability to initialize DRAM does not automatically mean that the machine’s entire boot chain is free of binary blobs; blob-free use remains dependent on hardware support. For this reason, the development makes visible the gap between software progress and the challenge of finding suitable hardware, particularly for those who use or want to use open-source firmware. Publishing the presentation recordings could provide additional details for assessing the method’s applicability to other platforms.
Background
Trail is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we published a news article mentioning this name in the last 90 days; that article is dated August 30, 2026.
Term: open source
Open source means that a software program’s source code is publicly available and its license permits inspection, modification, and redistribution; it is not the same as being free of charge.