equivalent to Intel Managment engine in omap5


codifies

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Sep 29, 2014
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While I really apreciate the open source nature of intels new GPU's (basically open source from bare metal to userland) one thing I've long been uneasy about is Intel's Managment engine (or equivilents)

With no actual way to shut it off (Its designed primarily for anti theft recovery) it has access to DMA (memory HD etc) and worse still it has access to a network device... to me its just a backdoor waiting to be reverse enginered (am I paranoid to suspect US "inteligence" services have been provided access keys?)

While the public documents look good for the OMAP5 I was wondering if anyone had heard any nasty rumours - while intels ME relies on a seperate controller on the motherboard (cpu resets if it doesn't get conformation from this controller) with a SoC a lot of the "motherboard" is on the die...
 
Possibly the ARM TrustZone stuff - that runs in a privileged mode and has access to peripherals, and nobody (or at least nobody that hasn't signed an NDA) knows what exactly it does or how it does it as far as I can tell. I'd hope there's nothing running under it on a chip supplied from the fab and soldered to a board yourself (as it's most publicised use is restricting playback of copyrighted material - and the Pandora's CPU should have it too yet I've never had any trouble playing my own media on that - although I don't have any DRM restricted data files to the best of my knowledge).
 
Well I can live with unused parts of the die, as long as it can only be used for DRM and it can be turned OFF!! - it is a sad state we find are selves in isn't it where you find yourself unsure if you can trust a chip manufacturer...
 
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