flashrom/doc/release_notes/v_1_5.rst

====================
v1.5 (Dec 2024)
====================

This document describes the major changes in flashrom version v1.5.0,
from more than 80 patches contributed by more than 20 authors (thank you!).

And we all did it in just ~4 months since previous release.

Download
========

flashrom v1.5.0 can be downloaded in various ways:

Anonymous checkout from the git repository at https://review.coreboot.org/flashrom.git
(tag v1.5.0)

A tarball is available for download at <TODO add tarball>
(signature <TODO add signature>)

fingerprint: <TODO add fingerprint>

Known issues
============

AMD-based PCs with FCH are unable to read flash contents for internal (BIOS
flash) chips larger than 16 MB, and attempting to do so may crash the system.
Systems with AMD "Promontory" IO extenders (mostly "Zen" desktop platforms) are
not currently supported.

https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/370

Build only supported with Meson
===============================

As documented in the :doc:`v1.4 release notes <v_1_4>`, support for building
flashrom with make has been removed; all Makefiles have been deleted. Meson is
now the only supported tool for building flashrom from source.

New Features
============

Support for ECAM
----------------

Libpci 3.13.0 and onwards support ECAM to access pci registers. flashrom will
be moved to ECAM from IO port 0xcf8/0xcfc if the libpci version is >= 3.13.0.
The ECAM has been supported for a very long time, most platforms should support
it. For those platforms don't support ECAM, libpci will terminate the process by
exit.

Progress bar
------------

Progress bar feature is now working for all operations: read, erase, write.

To display progress bar, add ``--progress`` option on the command line.

Option to choose between speed and longevity of the chip
--------------------------------------------------------

New command line option ``--sacrifice-ratio`` handles the following situation:

There is a region which is requested to be erased (or written, because
the write operation uses erase too). Some of the areas inside this
region don't need to be erased, because the bytes already have expected
value. Such areas can be skipped.

The logic selects eraseblocks that can cover the areas which need to be
erased. Suppose there is a region which is partially covered by
eraseblocks of size S (partially because remaining areas don't need to
be erased). Now suppose we can cover the whole region with eraseblock
of larger size, S+1, and erase it all at once. This will run faster:
erase opcode will only be sent once instead of many smaller opcodes.
However, this will run erase over some areas of the chip memory that
didn't need to be erased. Which means the physical chip will wear out
faster.

This new option sets the maximum % of memory that is allowed for
redundant erase. Default is 0, S+1 size block only selected if all the
area needs to be erased in full. 50 means that if more than a half of
the area needs to be erased, a S+1 size block can be selected to cover
the entire area with one block.

The tradeoff is the speed of programming operation VS the longevity of
the chip. Default is longevity.

RPMC support added
------------------

Adding support for RPMC commands as specified by JESD260 to the cli_client.

Main implementation is in ``rpmc.c``. Also adds new parsing capabilities for the SFDP
page carrying the necessary information. All the features are optional and
depend on ``libcrypto``.

It currently uses automatic feature detection through the corresponding
SFDP page.

Programmer updates
==================

* ch347_spi: Add spi clock frequency selection (``spispeed`` option)
* dummyflasher: Enable higher frequency emulation, add docs and tests
* ichspi: Change the opcode position for reprogramming on the fly 2->4
* ichspi: Merge spi_master implementations for Intel ich
* stlinkv3_spi: Mark STLinkV3-Mini not working

Bugs fixed
==========

* Modified bytes would sometimes not be verified after writing

  In some situations an off-by-one error would cause the last byte
  of memory that was modified by an operation to not be verified.
  This could prevent some erase or write errors from being detected,
  or in other cases could make verification appear false-negative.

  Fixed by https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84078.

* Possible crashes while preparing erase operations

  An out-of-bounds memory read was found in the algorithm that selects methods
  to erase memory, which could cause flashrom to crash. This issue was first
  introduced in release 1.4, and crashes were observed when running on OpenBSD.

  See https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/555, and fixed by
  https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84234.

* Crash when attempting to erase FEATURE_NO_ERASE chips

  When attempting to erase a chip that doesn't need to be erased before
  being written, flashrom could attempt to read through a null pointer
  and crash. The only supported chip that is affected is the M95M02
  EEPROM.

  See https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/553, and fixed by
  https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84203.

* install failures related to libcmocka

  In some configurations, the install target provided by the buildsystem (like
  meson install) would fail to execute successfully due to a missing libcmocka
  file. This is fixed by not installing libcmocka, because it is a third-party
  library used by flashrom only for testing.

  See https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/561, and fixed by
  https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84557.

* Excess erase of automatically-probed chips on Intel chipsets

  When erasing some chips using the ichspi programmer (for Intel ICH chipsets),
  the entire chip would be erased and rewritten even when the hardware supported
  erasing smaller blocks, causing operations to take longer to complete and
  negatively impacting chip longevity. This issue was first introduced in version
  1.4.

  See https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/556, and fixed by
  https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84253.

* Unnecessary erases

  When erasing parts of a memory, some blocks could be erased and rewritten
  unnecessarily or erased multiple times which could hurt the longevity of
  the memory chip. This behavior was introduced in version 1.4.

  Fixed by https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84614 and
  https://review.coreboot.org/c/flashrom/+/84686.

Chipset support
===============

Added Raptor Point PCH support.

Chip model support added
========================

* FM25Q04
* FM25Q64
* FM25Q128

* GD25B128E
* GD25B256E
* GD25B512MF
* GD25F64F
* GD25F128F
* GD25F256F
* GD25R128E
* GD25R256E
* GD25R512MF
* GD25LB256F
* GD25LB512ME
* GD25LB512MF
* GD25LR256F
* GD25LR512MF
* GD25LF256F
* GD25LF512MF

* MX25U25645G
* MX77U51250F

* W25Q32JV_M
* W25R512NW
* W74M51NW

* XM25LU64C
* XM25QH32C
* XM25QH32D
* XM25QH64D
* XM25QH128D
* XM25QH256D
* XM25QH512C
* XM25QH512D
* XM25QU16C
* XM25QU32C
* XM25QU128D
* XM25QU256D
* XM25QU512C
* XM25QU512D


* S25FL256L marked as tested

Misc
=========

* reduce DELAY_MINIMUM_SLEEP_US to 100 by default
* tests: Add assert for eraseblocks order of invocations for write op
* tests: Add header stdlib.h to allow scan-build to do analysis
* VERSION: Change name pattern to match tag name from now on
* writeprotect: Fix inaccurate return code
* erasure_layout: Fix unreachable error message
* linux_mtd: fix build with clang >= 19
* Extract usbdev declarations to a separate header
* chipset_enable.c: Add TGL chipset detection based on SPI PCI ID
* flashchips: Skip "WP untested" message for SFDP-capable chip
* sfdp: Update the message shown when SFDP-capable chip is detected
* build script: Add rpmc option to always be enabled on Jenkins
* Rename cli_classic.h to a more adequate cli_getop.h