MP 7,1 Speculation on the MP7,1 bootrom

[DearthnVader]

It’s pure speculation on my part, but I would not put it passed Apple to lock the boot rom on the 7,1 so the cpu can’t be upgraded.

We know that the T2 chip validates the firmware, so it won’t be easy to modify.

So at this point it’s buyer beware if you are buying a low core CPU with the hopes of upgrading it later.

 

[tsialex]

It’s pure speculation on my part, but I would not put it passed Apple to lock the boot rom on the 7,1 so the cpu can’t be upgraded.

We know that the T2 chip validates the firmware, so it won’t be easy to modify.

So at this point it’s buyer beware if you are buying a low core CPU with the hopes of upgrading it later.

If you buy the cheapest option now and later upgrade to a beefier Xeon that Apple supports inside the BootROM, upgrades will not be a problem.

MP7,1 BootROM is inside today's BridgeOSUpdateCustomer, someone will extract it soon enough and we will see all microcodes inside.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I agree upgrading the CPU shouldn't be a problem. It'll be interesting to see if the BootROM supports CPUs not available from Apple like the Scalable Xeons. It could very well be that those will be available from Apple in the rack mount version. I don't think we've gotten much info yet on that version.

 

[bsbeamer]

I agree upgrading the CPU shouldn't be a problem. It'll be interesting to see if the BootROM supports CPUs not available from Apple like the Scalable Xeons. It could very well be that those will be available from Apple in the rack mount version. I don't think we've gotten much info yet on that version.

Rackmount version is not really approved by the FCC yet. It was going through the process as of last week.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Okay, so according to Apple it will have the same configuration options as the tower.

 

[1am0]

unlike cMp, there's NO EFI firmware in IC, which is soldered on motherboard. only t2 rom chip which contains iBoot firmware. the "usual" EFI firmware is stored in T2 flash memory. you can't read it or extract it to unpack or to work with it.

 

[tsialex]

unlike cMp, there's NO EFI firmware in IC, which is soldered on motherboard. only t2 rom chip which contains iBoot firmware. the "usual" EFI firmware is stored in T2 flash memory. you can't read it or extract it to unpack or to work with it.

You can all BootROMs for T2 Macs from BridgeOSUpdateCustomer.

 

[1am0]

well, that's right. but you can't download real EFI capsule from t2. I'm not interesting in iBoot firmwares, I already have them all(there're not so many actual versions). iBoot is only for t2 recovery mode.