1. Sandy Bridge E Processors Suitable For Mac Download
2. Intel Sandy Bridge Processor
3. Sandy Bridge E Processors Suitable For Machine

Neutralize ME firmware on SandyBridge and IvyBridge platforms Post on 17 November 2016 Author: persmule Mail: persmule@gmail.com 00 ME: Management Engine First introduced in Intel’s 965 Express Chipset Family, the Intel Management Engine (ME) is a separate computing environment physically located in the (G)MCH chip (for Core 2 family CPUs which is separate from the northbridge), or PCH chip replacing ICH(for Core i3/i5/i7 which is integrated with northbridge). The ME consists of an individual processor core, code and data caches, a timer, and a secure internal bus to which additional devices are connected, including a cryptography engine, internal ROM and RAM, memory controllers, and a direct memory access (DMA) engine to access the host operating system’s memory as well as to reserve a region of protected external memory to supplement the ME’s limited internal RAM. The ME also has network access with its own MAC address through the Intel Gigabit Ethernet Controller integrated in the southbridge (ICH or PCH). The Intel Management Engine with its proprietary firmware has complete access to and control over the PC: it can power on or shut down the PC, read all open files, examine all running applications, track all keys pressed and mouse movements, and even capture or display images on the screen.

And it has a network interface that is demonstrably insecure, which can allow an attacker on the network to inject rootkits that completely compromise the PC and can report to the attacker all activities performed on the PC. It is a threat to freedom, security, and privacy that can’t be ignored. 01 Early efforts to remove ME The ME’s boot program, stored on the internal ROM, loads a firmware “manifest” from the PC’s SPI flash chip. This manifest is signed with a strong cryptographic key, which differs between versions of the ME firmware. If the manifest isn’t signed by a specific Intel key, the boot ROM won’t load and execute the firmware and the ME processor core will be halted.

The ME working with Core 2 processors (Q43, Q45, GM45 and the like) can be disabled by setting a couple of values in the SPI flash memory. The ME firmware can then be removed entirely from the flash memory space. On the Intel 4 Series systems (GM45, GS45, G41, etc) that it supports, such as the Libreboot X200 and Libreboot T400. Later ME found on all systems with an Intel Core i3/i5/i7 CPU and a PCH, include “ME Ignition” firmware that performs some hardware initialization and power management. If the ME’s boot ROM does not find in the SPI flash memory an ME firmware manifest with a valid Intel signature, the whole PC will shut down after 30 minutes. (The above two paragraphs are excerpted from, with some minor modifications) 02 Minimize ME’s power on platforms with PCH As mentioned above, completely removing the ME is hardly possible on platforms with PCH, so (at least) my goal on such platforms should be: Leave minimalist ME function to keep the whole system stable (thus prevent the 30-minute-shutdown ), and then remove all remaining function unrelated to this, especially those threatening our freedom, security, and privacy. ME’s sectional and modular design makes it possible.

Different ME modules are stored in different partitions in the ME region of the SPI flash, and their signature are verified separately, so it is possible to completely prevent one module being loaded without interfering another. 2016, detected that, and few days later, he found that, which has been repeated by few weeks later. Finally on Nov.

2016, Nicola Corna and found that, and they wrote, and few days later they published the script. With that script and coreboot’s utilities, I successfully neutralized the ME firmware on my x220, with vendor bios untouched. 03 Great effort needs great tools.

The boot firmware (BIOS and the like) on a platform with ME consists of a firmware descriptor containing every region’s offset, size and access permission, and several regions containing various codes and data. Below is a descripter of a boot firmware, printed by flashrom(8). Region Section FLREG0 0x00000000 FLREG1 0x03ff0260 FLREG2 0x025f000b FLREG3 0x00020001 FLREG4 0x000a0003 - Details - Region 0 (Descr.) 0x00000000 - 0x00000fff Region 1 (BIOS ) 0x00260000 - 0x003fffff Region 2 (ME ) 0x0000b000 - 0x0025ffff Region 3 (GbE ) 0x00001000 - 0x00002fff Region 4 (Platf.) 0x00003000 - 0x0000afff Master Section FLMSTR1 0x1a1b0000 FLMSTR2 0x0c0d0000 FLMSTR3 0x08080218 - Details - Descr. BIOS ME GbE Platf. BIOS r rw rw rw ME r rw rw GbE rw flashrom(8), a flash programming tool whose project cooperates with coreboot, is able to operate the on-board SPI flash containing the boot firmware via its internal driver. Unfortunately, on most platforms with ME, like the example above, the ME region is usually readable only for ME hardware, not the main CPU, which prevents us from using flashrom(8) with internal programmer to even read the whole content of the vendor firmware.

In order to research the boot firmware, we need an external programmer. There are a lot of external programmers usable to flashrom(8) available in China, from cheap, to more professional. According to my experience, those dedicated external programmers are feasible to program solitary SPI flash chips, but not feasible for, because their electrical current to program chips may be too small, as other components on circuit may disperse the current, and dispersed current is not enough to program, even detect the chip. (Update: Recent tests proves that ch341aspi is stable enough to do in-system programming on most newer boards with faster SPI chips, for it has difficulty to adjust its speed to fit slower SPI chips. Ch341aspi could be operated with flashrom(8) on your PC, and is far faster than buspiratespi.) Fortunately, the SPI bus available on some ARM development boards is usually powerful enough, so I use a as my external in-system programmer: I have configured my BBB according to, using a statically built ARM architecture flashrom(8) executable file provided by libreboot (, put under /opt/flashrom/) to power its SPI bus with linuxspi driver.

04 Read the content of the SPI flash chip via In-System Programming. Remove all power supply (AC and battery) of Thinkpad x220, then remove its keyboard and palmrest, according to, to expose its 64Mibit (8MiByte) SOIC-8 SPI flash chip.

So I am going to use the configuration below to connect the chip to BBB, with which I have used to program other boards. front (display) on your X220 18 -1 22 -NC NC -21 3 3.3V (PSU) -17 - this is pin 1 on the flash chip.

Sandy Bridge E Processors Suitable For Mac Download

back (palmrest) on your X220 Unfortunately, the tip of the clip is worn out, insufficient to grab the chip, but fortunately I still have to, half of whose tip is just sufficient to grab the SOIC-8 chip. Its uneven pins also have enough space for dupont wires to connect. With an additional 5V power supplier connected, the BBB has enough voltage and current to perform in-system programming, and I connect BBB to my desktop PC via its mini type B USB peripheral port, via which I could get usbnet access. Root@beaglebone:/dev/shm# /opt/flashrom/flashrom -p linuxspi:dev=/dev/spidev1.0,spispeed=4096 -c -r factoryx220.bin root@beaglebone:/dev/shm# /opt/flashrom/flashrom -p linuxspi:dev=/dev/spidev1.0,spispeed=4096 -c -r factoryx220.bin.1 Read chip at least twice, and make sure that all the resulted images are the same (e.g. By checksum), otherwise they cannot be considered reliable. The rom image factoryx220.bin should be 8MiB large.

Intel Sandy Bridge Processor

Copy it to the PC with scp(1). 05 Neutralize the ME.

Finally, the BIOS image with despicable ME firmware inside is on the chopping board. Use Nicola Corna’s to neutralize it. Note that mecleaner will modify the operated file in place, so make a copy for it to modify is recommended.

$ cp factoryx220.bin factoryx220meneuted.bin $ python /path/to/mecleaner.py factoryx220meneuted.bin After the neutralization the ME region contains only the code for the very basic initialization, about 55 kB of compressed code. 06 Anatomize the vendor BIOS image. Coreboot provides ifdtool to analyze firmware images with firmware descripter. Download yamaha reface dx synthesizer firmware 1.30-2 for mac download. Its source code is located in $COREBOOTSRC/util/ifdtool, it should be make(1) first. You can optionally use ifdtool to:. Unlock write access to all region for main CPU (with ifdtool -u factoryx220meneuted.bin), hoping to ease the programming of coreboot later.

Unfortunately most OEM’s BIOS still lock the SPI flash, making flashrom(8) in the OS unable to write (but able to read) the flash. Dissect the BIOS image (with ifdtool -x factoryx220meneuted.bin), and have the neutralized ME region in an individual file for later uses (e.g. Integrate it to the coreboot image you build). If you want you can also use mecleaner directly on the individual ME file ( python /path/to/mecleaner.py flashregion2intelme.bin). 07 Write the modified image back. Copy the modified firmware image back to BBB. Root@beaglebone:/dev/shm# /opt/flashrom/flashrom -VVp linuxspi:dev=/dev/spidev1.0,spispeed=4096 -c -w factoryx220meneuted.bin The writing procedure is presented with increased verbosity: flashrom(8) will read the old content of the chip first, then compare every 4KiB page between the old content and the provided image file, and only write different pages, either by rewriting (EW), by modifying (W) if only (1-0) occurred, or by erasing (E) if target page should only consist of all 1 (FF).

Finally, flashrom(8) verifies the content just written with the provided image file. With ME neutralized, the MEI interface should disappear from the PCI bus. Most of other components work just fine, with no 30-minute-shutdown. Sometimes the MEI interface is still present: you can analyze it with intelmetool ( $COREBOOTSRC/util/intelmetool, make(1) it first), and check its status. Sometimes the NIC doesn’t work after a cold boot (it cannot even be recognized as an NIC), but does after a warm boot. It may be possible to add some code to Coreboot or Linux to work around this, but it has not yet been done.

Apple is dependent upon Intel at this point. The CPUs that Apple is expected to use aren't out yet, but are, IIRC, slated for a Q4 release if everything goes well. The release of the CPUs isn't an assurance that Apple will immediately refresh the Pro though, nor is the current time between refreshes (the last model was 511 days, as you may have seen in the buyer's guide). Still, I doubt we'll see them any earlier than Oct-ish, but more likely sometime in January. This is just guesswork on my part though, so don't use the above when making any important purchasing decisions.

With the massive jump in performance that Sandy Bridge brought to the other models, I'm pretty excited to see what the Mac Pro refresh brings (the entry level mini I just bought for HTPC use scores a fair bit higher in Geekbench than my first gen MP, ffs!). I think Marco has it right: JUN 19 2011 ∞ Rumor: New Mac Pros and Minis in August Seems a few months too soon for the Mac Pro. Apple doesn't just pull new Macs out of thin air when they feel like it: they usually follow Intel's roadmap closely, especially for the Xeon-based Mac Pro.

What's happening in the Xeon line in July or August to motivate a Mac Pro update? As far as I can tell, nothing. The single-socket Xeon was recently updated to Sandy Bridge with the very good E3 line, but the dual-socket E5 line isn't due out until the fourth quarter. So, in descending order of likelihood: either this rumor's timeline is wrong, Apple's getting very early access to the Xeon E5, or the next Mac Pro isn't offering any dual-socket models at launch. Buy the hex-core now.

They are occasionally available on refurb page at Apple.com if you want to save a little money / avoid the devaluation the second you 'drive it off the lot.' Although currently there are only the older generation Nehalem machines available. Don't panic: it changes from week to week. In fact, for others not having a business need for a new Mac Pro, I'd wait until after the Sandy Bridge release and buy a refurb Westmere at that time when the price will drop a bit more. Unless you need thunderbolt (or unless they change the form-factor for some reason), you'll be getting a very good performer at a much lower price.

Rumor sites don't know shit about this type of product because there's no reason for Apple to leak anything. They're far better at predicting gadget launches because Apple does leak stuff on that front. There still are some places where a MacPro makes sense - although especially with TB that market keeps getting smaller. Wasn't the same be said of the XServe?

I think Apple honestly thinks the Mini can do what the XServe did. I disagree but I think that case can be made. People who want a MacPro need support for the top of the line chips from Intel for speed - i.e.

Photoshop, video, or even compilation. In fact I bet that a lot of folks within Apple have MacPros rather than MBPs just because of compilation speed. So when those new chips come out in November or whenever it'll be a big deal for a lot of people. The xServe really fit a role that I don't think Apple wanted to be in anymore. (And probably hopes iCloud will make irrelevant).

Hackintosh should be mentioned. I have a few in our lab and we won't buying any more Mac pros they've worked so well.

In a production environment? I'm all for hobbiest OS X installs but, for many working environments, the machine is secondary to the warranty and support contract. It's clearly not for everyone but worth considering.

We're a biomedical research lab and the additional configurability and grant dollars saved with Hackintosh won us over. Clearly you're not going to get AppleCare with this route so if that's important to you, a real Mac is in order. Typically speaking for grants I thought you had to spend at least $5k on a 'single stand-alone system' for it to be labeled as 'equipment' and not get hit with hefty penalties? (Somewhat strange but that's the way I understand it is).

And I am the sysadmin so there is no way in hell I will be supporting a Hackintosh for our work (which I'm not even sure is strictly legal). Actually one of my friends was using a Hackintosh and recently lost all of his data - he can't even access his Time Machine backup due to some driver issues he had I don't want to criticize your set-up (and I'm sure it's doable correctly) but that's not something I have time to spend on ATM. If the Mac Pro is discontinued I would just buy a Dell workstation and install Linux. I would really miss Apple's a) great support from AppleCare+Genius Bar, b) Mac OS X's slick UI and c) the excellent hardware (again in terms of support and look+feel).

The rest is already available on Linux but those 3 reasons are basically why I am stilling with Apple+Mac OS X for desktops and laptops (not servers) and why I'm willing to overlook Mac OS X's shortcomings in terms of package management and un-Linux-like behavior (I'm looking at you top, dseditgroup, and softwareupdate). And I am the sysadmin so there is no way in hell I will be supporting a Hackintosh for our work (which I'm not even sure is strictly legal). If it doesn't work for you my feelings won't be hurt.

For us, support for the hackintoshes has been about the same as for a regular mac. We are more careful during software updates but we're pretty careful about those for real macs too. The upside outweighs that. Good point and I didn't mean to hurt your feelings - more power to you, in fact. The updates for regular Mac OS X are even not for the faint-hearted (as I understand if you have a power-outage during a software update you might just brick your system). Actually one of my friends was using a Hackintosh and recently lost all of his data - he can't even access his Time Machine backup due to some driver issues he had I don't want to criticize your set-up (and I'm sure it's doable correctly) but that's not something I have time to spend on ATM.

1) your friend had a ridiculously inadequate backup strategy 2) Time machine backups don't always work even on Apple macs. Yeah Time machine is far from perfect. I basically use SVN/cloud for my critical files but Time machine saved me tons of time when my hard-drive failed to get back up and running with all my applications! And I think it's great that you have got it to work and that Hackintosh is working well. I would.love.

to see Hackintosh aka Mac OS X work perfectly on more systems. Typically speaking for grants I thought you had to spend at least $5k on a 'single stand-alone system' for it to be labeled as 'equipment' and not get hit with hefty penalties? (Somewhat strange but that's the way I understand it is). Not for NIH grants, at least not that our grants office is aware of. Gotcha, I am thinking NSF (I think) so it could be different. Virtually all federal RFPs will include a section says that supplies are under $5K and 'equipment' is over, as we.

AFAIK this is true for the NIH as well, although perhaps they have some kind of different word for it. With our clients, we strongly discourage 'equipment' purchases because they trigger a raft of federal purchasing rules.

NIH pretty much lets you do what you think best with the grant money these days as long as institution approves 2. Those drive slots are used for more than just the extra capacity (RAID, backup, disk swapping.) 3. Where, oh where is my new Mac Pro?? Have been waiting a long time but current one is still doing fine the 16xx should turbo near, or above, 4 GHz and bring some of 'teh snappy' to photoshop Xeon E5-1620 is a quad-core chip with 3.6 GHz clock speed and 10 MB L3 cache.

Two other Xeons, E5-1650 and E5-1660, feature 6 CPU cores, although their clock frequencies are lower than on the E5-1620. The E5-1650 SKU runs at 3.2 GHz, and has 12 MB level 3 cache. The Intel E5-1660 has 3.3 GHz stock frequency and 15 MB last level cache. Looking at the specifications, you may notice that they resemble very closely the specs of i7-3xxx extreme processors with Sandy Bridge-E core.

Like the i7-3xxx CPUs, Xeon E5-1600 products incorporate all standard and advanced Sandy Bridge features, including Hyper-Threading, Turbo Boost, Trusted Execution, VT-c/d/x, as well as AES and AVX instructions. The E5 chips integrate quad-channel memory controller, and support DDR3 memory with data rates up to 1600 MHz.

In lots of corporate purchasing systems an expenditure for a single item larger than $X will trigger a requirement for at least Y competitive bids, administered by a purchasing person with absolutely no knowledge of what they are buying for whom or why, or why some of the written specs might be more important than others. A poorly written specification by the requisitioner has a high likelihood of resulting in a very affordable toaster or washing machine being purchased in place of the desired Mac Pro. You aren't getting four storage devices.

into any other Apple machine. I've got 5 in mine. There's an extra SATA cable in the lower 5.25' drive bay.

You just need a bracket to mount the drive, or if you are sticking an SSD in there, some double sided tape will do. It's also the only Mac that you can plug multiple matte displays into, none of this glossy 16:9 bullshit. I quite enjoy my 30' IPS panel, and plan to add two more when I have the desk space. 27' iMac is nice, but just to limiting for this desktop centric geek.hugs it. CG.

I had been considering a 27' i7 iMac because my Core2Duo 24' iMac is seriously starting to bog down with Lightroom and music apps. The upgradability of the MP would be very tempting if the price were right. Long-term it would be more cost-effective and easier to troubleshoot if I could install my own SSDs as they come down in price, and being able to have a matte screen again as my primary monitor would also be lovely. Apple's upgrade pricing history shows how rarely they make big changes in prices on model tiers, so the base level machine would probably remain close to the current $2500 price-point, which is close to the total cost of the tricked-out iMac with 3rd-party 16Gb RAM I have been thinking about. If Apple made a physically smaller base Mac Pro that only had 1-2 PCIe slots (and could therefore accommodate a cheaper and wimpier power supply) and priced it at $1999 I bet it would grow sales with a lot of power home users while preserving its current market for users of heavy iron. Wishful thinking though. Apple really prefers selling closed boxes these days.

Given the increasingly lengthy waits between Mac Pro refreshes, if a new Mac Pro will be out later this year you can probably kiss goodbye the idea of another Mac Pro using Ivy Bridge (which supposedly would offer a 20% increase in speed); we'd have to wait for Haswell in 2013 before another upgrade/ It'd probably be this or nothing for another 18 months. Given the increasingly lengthy waits between Mac Pro refreshes, if a new Mac Pro will be out later this year you can probably kiss goodbye the idea of another Mac Pro using Ivy Bridge (which supposedly would offer a 20% increase in speed); we'd have to wait for Haswell in 2013 before another upgrade/ It'd probably be this or nothing for another 18 months. Apple's Mac Pro release schedule is entirely determined by when Intel releases Mac Pro-appropriate CPUs. Like Sandy Bridge-E, Ivy Bridge-E will likely come out well after mainstream Ivy Bridge. It will probably be the 'Late 2012' Mac Pro.

Apple's Mac Pro release schedule is entirely determined by when Intel releases Mac Pro-appropriate CPUs. Like Sandy Bridge-E, Ivy Bridge-E will likely come out well after mainstream Ivy Bridge. It will probably be the 'Late 2012' Mac Pro. Aka the 2013 Mac Pro What disappoints me is Apple's disinclination to really target the low-end workstation market in favor of offering $3k+ boxes. As someone running an iMac with a half-dozen drives sitting on his desk (externals, drive dock, backup bare drives) I would really enjoy shoving bare drives into a fast minitower, but Apple's choices and prices and price-performance for my pro/consumer needs (photo, music, storage) don't line up well. I really wonder what Apple plans to do now that they've killed the Xserve and waited so long to refresh the Mac Pros.

Sandy Bridge E Processors Suitable For Machine

Will the new MP be more flexible and be rackmountable? Will they add an affordable minitower with fewer slots? (My pipe dream.) Or are they merely happy to plow the lucrative and successful consumer channel while only offering expensive (5+ year-old box design) models to customers who have to get a large, relatively expensive tower because Apple has no smaller, more affordable alternatives for them? Not disagreeing at all, but I used to own a PowerMac G4 'Quicksilver' and it just grates on me that Apple killed off any kind of decent $1600 minitower.

If Apple were inclined to sell affordable workstation desktops the best way for them to cut costs would be to come out with a smaller, more limited tower with fewer PCI card slots and a smaller power supply - a half-pint tower. Yes, even though the market is quickly moving away from towers they're still a small and profitable niche, especially for businesses. And fewer customized and miniaturized parts leads to higher margins and/or lower selling prices. That's why you can get a bare-bones Dell (yeah yeah, I know) tower with a dual-core Xeon W3503 starting at $1300, or dual quad-core Xeon E5606 starting at $2800. Or less, depending on what coupons or sales are going 'round. Yet having killed off the Xserve, I suspect that you're both right and that instead Apple is going the other way: relatively expensive, stackable Mac Pros that can double as servers. Yes, even though the market is quickly moving away from towers they're still a small and profitable niche, especially for businesses.

Apple clearly doesn't want to be in small markets like this. (I'm not convinced it's that profitable niche either, but that's neither here nor there) Apple would prefer to have you decide to go to something higher end (MacPro) or lower end (MacMini). I think with the new Minis in particular that's something very doable in terms of function.

The problem honestly is in form factor since for many people the Minis aren't an ideal form factor even once cheaper TB come out (whenever that would be) I think though that Apple (correctly I think) doesn't think the number of people who need a mid sized tower form factor is worth the development costs and issues related to having too many product lines. Remember one of the first things Jobs did when he came back was to try and keep the number of product lines as small as possible - arguably one of the big reasons Apple became profitable again. For Apple, the problem with commodity minitowers is that they are the least profitable segment of the market, because it's just about the most price-sensitive segment and it's very difficult to add value.

Apple does not like razor-thin margins, and they get out of segments where there are razor-thin margins. So they add value on the desktop by shrinking and quieting the form factor on the low end, and by making the world's best case and adding server/workstation components on the high end. It's harder to see how they add value to a segment where people make buying decisions over a $10-$20 price difference, especially given that most users in that segment are gamers and therefore not well suited to OS X.