A Modern Supermicro Kabylake Xeon Motherboard Now Supports Coreboot

While the tide may be eventually turning, as it stands today for those wanting to run Coreboot on x86 desktop/server hardware you are largely limited to generations-old platforms. But now there is a new option and that is a Coreboot port having been completed to a modern Supermicro motherboard for use with Intel Xeon "Kabylake" processors.

Through a partnership between 9elements Cyber Security and Mullvad, a port has been completed to the Supermicro X11SSH-TF motherboard that is for Xeon E3-1200 v6 series processors.

The Coreboot port supports the ASpeed 2400 series BMC, the BMC IPMI interface, verified and measured boot support, Xeon E3-1200 support, and TPM 1.2/2.0 is supported.

This port is being done as part of Mullvad's "System Transparency" project with this VPN provider trying to show the trust to their customers that their software and hardware can be trusted as well as data storage (or there the lack of) practices.

More details on this Supermicro X11SSH-TF port via the 9elements blog.

The board supports LGA-1151 processors, four DDR4-2400 memory sockets, five USB 3.0 ports (and six USB 2.0), dual 10GBase-T LAN, eight SATA 3.0 ports, M.2 storage support, and other modern features. It's not bad for being a micro-ATX Xeon board. The Supermicro X11SSH-TF microATX Xeon server motherboard retails for about $380 USD.