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Comment by ece | Hacker News Reader

What happened to 3rd party chipsets? Seems like VIA, ALi, SiS, Nvidia nForce, all stopped making them for Intel processors around 2008. If there were alternative chipsets still around, we would see more motherboard makers adopting something like openBMC with an alternative chipset and using it. No Intel PCH, no Intel ME.

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If there were alternative chipsets still around, we would see more motherboard makers adopting something like openBMC with an alternative chipset and using it.

No we wouldn't. All the chipsets would be subject to the same market forces and thus would converge on similar features, including the ME. Just like how 99% of x86 systems are running UEFI instead of coreboot.

That is not an apples to apples comparison. Plenty of features differ from motherboard to motherboard. Someone like an ASUS could adopt openbmc much easier if an alternative chipset existed. I'm not arguing about the marketability of openbmc, I know it exists. I'm talking about why there are no chipset alternatives to Intel PCH that would force Intel ME on us.

This coreboot that is on every chromebook, and itself implements the UEFI standard? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreboot#History

Big companies will do open consumer friendly products, once the ecosystem exists and there is some consumer awareness.

I believe Intel stopped releasing the documentation required to make them around that timeframe.

If the EU or US regulators can force Google and Microsoft to unbundle and provide APIs, surely unbundling chipsets fit in the same category. Making chipsets was a successful business for quite a few companies, too bad the FTC didn't force Intel to provide enough documentation, like it mandated the number of PCI-E lanes.

Now if the NSA got to the FTC, that would be different.

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