15h.org Ships Updated Open-Source Firmware For Aging AMD Bulldozer/Piledriver Hardware

While there is the AMD openSIL project for open-source CPU silicon initialization for platforms moving forward with plans to ultimately replace AGESA and be more friendly toward the likes of Coreboot, for those on aging AMD Bulldozer and Piledriver era platforms there is some updated open-source firmware available thanks to an independent free software project.

For those that don't remember or weren't around back in the 2011 timeframe, back then AMD was initially promoting Coreboot and putting out open-source AGESA code for the processors/platforms of the time before running into their financial difficulties and abandoning those efforts. But with that open-source code still being available and prior a Coreboot port to the ASUS KGPE-D16 and other Opteron server motherboards of the time, 15h.org has been building off that to provide more robust open-source firmware support for these aging Bulldozer/Piledriver platforms.

15h.org developer Mike Rothfuss wrote into Phoronix to talk about their "phenomenal" effort with now achieving for the project:

- Bug-free RAM init. Every memory module I've tested works. The maximum RAM is now 512 GB.
- Fast and reliable boots. The platform boots consistently and within ~15 seconds for a 256GB setup.
- Native fan control using the motherboard's hardware monitor
- Thermal throttling to protect the CPU from overheating (and thermal shutdown support)
- Improved multicore performance
- Reduced idle power usage
- Bug-free IOMMU support (tested on Debian, FreeBSD, Xen, and QubesOS)
- Full support for AMDs speculative execution patches, which did not work on ASUS BIOS or Raptor Engineering's port. This enables the latest QubesOS to run without any problems
- Support for up to 4 PCIe devices, 1 PIKE card, and 1 PCI device (6 card maximum)

The new 15h.org 2025.11.09-v4.11 firmware release has optimized its AMD HyperTransport handling, improved RAM power savings, optimized RAM ECC scrub rates, setup thermal throttling, and enabling thermal shutdown support. Yes, new firmware updates in 2025 for these roughly decade old platforms.

Officially supported motherboard targets include the ASUS KGPE-D16, SuperMicro H8SCM, and SuperMicro H8SGL along with "beta" quality ports for the ASUS F2A85-M, ASUS F2A85-M PRO, ASUS F2A85-M LE, SuperMicro H8DGi, SuperMicro H8DG6, SuperMicro H8QGi+-F, and SuperMicro H8QG6+-F.

Those wanting to learn more about these renewed open-source firmware efforts for the AMD Family 15h processors and platforms can do so via 15h.org.