v1.4 (July 2024) — flashrom v1.6.0 (git:v1.6.0) documentation

# v1.4 (July 2024)

This document describes the major changes in flashrom version 1.4.0, from more than 400 patches contributed by more than 70 authors (thank you!) in the 18 months since version 1.3.0 was branched.

## Download

flashrom 1.4 can be downloaded in various ways:

Anonymous checkout from the git repository at https://review.coreboot.org/flashrom.git (tag v1.4.0)

A tarball is available for download at https://download.flashrom.org/releases/flashrom-1.4.0.tar.xz (signature https://download.flashrom.org/releases/flashrom-1.4.0.tar.xz.asc)

fingerprint: 6E6E F9A0 BA47 8006 E277 6E4C C037 BB41 3134 D111

## Known issue

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

## Major updates

### Optimised erase and write logic

Significant performance improvements with new logic which is based on: the optimal selection of erase blocks for the given logical layout, available erase functions, and size of memory area to erase/write.

Legacy code path still exists in the source tree, but it will be deleted by the next release.

### Optimised delays logic

Optimised logic and refactorings of delays functionality, in particular for SPI chips.

- Flashrom now sleeps more aggressively when a delay is required, rather than polling in a loop. This should reduce power consumption significantly, but may require more time to complete operations on systems experiencing high CPU load.

- An unconditional 1-second delay was removed for SPI flashes. This is not believed to be needed for any SPI flashes, but may be needed for some old parallel flashes (where it remains in use).

- Cycle-counting busy loops are now only used on DOS builds of flashrom. All other platforms use OS timers for timed delays, which are expected to be more accurate.

- Tree-wide refactorings around programmer_delay and internal_delay

### Documentation is in the git tree

Docs are available in the same repository as the code, in `doc/` directory.

Website content is automatically generated from docs in the git tree.

Patches with code changes and new features can (and should) update documentation in the same patch, which makes it a lot easier to maintain up-to-date docs.

Note: the migration process for documents from flashrom wiki to the git tree is half way. Wiki is deprecated now, and will go away once the migration process complete.

### Makefile scheduled for removal

Future versions of flashrom will drop support for building via Makefile: Meson will become the only supported build system.

The Makefile and meson build systems are currently at feature parity, except automated testing is supported only with meson. To reduce the maintenance burden, we plan to remove the Makefile after this release.

### Write-protect updates

- Support reading security register

- Support reading/writing configuration register

- More range functions (with different block sizes and handling of CMP bit)

### Protected regions support

- Support to allow programmers to handle protected regions on the flash.

- get_region() function is added so that programmers can expose access permissions for multiple regions within the flash.

- A get_region() implementation is added for the ichspi driver

## Chipset support added

- Tiger Lake

- Emmitsburg Chipset SKU

- Meteor Lake-P/M

- Panther Lake-U/H 12Xe

- Panther Lake-H 4Xe

## Chip models support added or updated

### New models support

- AT25DF011

- B.25D80A

- B25Q64AS

- GD25LB128E/GD25LR128E

- GD25LB256E

- GD25LF128E

- GD25Q127C/GD25Q128E

- GD25LQ255E

- GD25LR256E

- GD251R512ME

- IS25LP016

- IS25LQ016

- IS25WP016

- IS25WP020

- IS25WP040

- IS25WP080

- IS25WQ040

- MX25L1633E

- MX25L1636E

- MX25L3239E

- MX25L3255E

- MX25L3273F

- MX25L6473F

- MX25L6436E/MX25L6445E/MX25L6465E

- MX25L6473E

- MX25L12850F

- MX77L25650F

- MX25R2035F

- MX25R4035F

- MX25R8035F

- MX25U25643G

- MX25V16066

- P25Q06H

- P25Q11H

- P25Q21H

- W25Q16JV_M

- XM25QH128A

- XM25QH80B

- XM25QH16C/XM25QH16D

- XM25QU80B

- XM25RU256C

- XT25F02E

- XT25F64B

- XT25F128B

- ZD25D20

### Added write-protect support

- EN25QH32

- EN25QH64

- MX25L3206E/MX25L3208E

- MX25L6405

- MX25L6405D

- MX25L6406E/MX25L6408E

- MX25L12833F

- MT25QL512

- MX25R1635F

- MX25R1635F

- MX25U25643G

- MX25V1635F

- MX25V4035F

- MX25V8035F

- N25Q032..1E

- N25Q032..3E

- N25Q064..1E

- N25Q064..3E

- W25Q16.V

- W25Q32BV/W25Q32CV/W25Q32DV

- W25Q32FV

- W25Q32JV

- W25Q32BW/W25Q32CW/W25Q32DW

- W25Q32FW

- W25Q32JW…Q

- W25Q32JW…M

- W25Q64JW…M

- W25Q256JW_DTR

- W25Q512NW-IM

- W25X05

- W25X10

- W25X16

- W25X20

- W25X32

- W25X40

- W25X64

- W25X80

### Marked as tested

- AM29LV040B

- AT29C010A

- FM25F01

- FM25Q16

- MT25QL128

- S25FL128L

- W25Q128.V

- XM25QH64C

- XM25QH256C

- XM25QU256C

## Programmers support added or updated

- New programmer for ASM106x SATA controllers

- New programmer for WCH CH347, supports CH347T and CH347F packaging.

- buspirate: Add option for setting the aux pin

- jlink_spi: add cs=tms option to jlink_spi programmer

- raiden: Support target index with generic REQ_ENABLE

- buspirate_spi: add support for hiz output with pullups=off

- serprog: Add support for multiple SPI chip selects

## Utilities

- Bash completion (enabled by default with command line interface)

- CI checks for Signed-off-by line in commit message

- CI builds documentation

## Unit tests

### Added coverage for erase and write logic

20 test cases for each operation, with various logical layouts and chip memory states, and additional 6 for each, with protected regions configured. The test for erase and write is set up so that new test cases can be added whenever needed.

### selfcheck

selfcheck is now also implemented as a unit test.

selfcheck provides critical sanity checks for the programmer table, board matches table, and array of flashchip definitions.

Note that selfcheck currently, by default, still runs on flashrom init, because at the moment we can’t run unit tests on all supported platforms, and we don’t have continuous integration for all platforms.

This gives an opportunity for performance improvement for developers or companies who build their own flashrom binary and, importantly, can run unit tests with the build (Linux, BSD). For their own binary, it is possible to disable selfcheck on init and save some time (under their own responsibility to run unit tests).

### Coverage report

Unit tests coverage report can be generated with gcov or lcov / llvm.

### ch341a_spi test

Unit test which covers initialization-probing-shutdown of ch341a_spi.

Reduces the risk of breakage for the very popular programmer.

### Write-protect

Added coverage for write-protect operation

## Some of the other misc fixes and improvements

- bitbang_spi.c: Fix unchecked heap allocation

- writeprotect.c: skip unnecessary writes

- writeprotect.c: refuse to work with chip if OTP WPS == 1

- flashrom.c: Drop redundant chip read validation in verify_range()

- ichspi: Clear Fast SPI HSFC register before HW seq operation

- ichspi: Fix number of bytes for HW seq operations

- writeprotect,ichspi,spi25: handle register access constraints

- tree/: Make heap alloc checks err msg consistent

- flashrom.c: Replace ‘exit(1)’ leaks with return codes on err paths

- flashrom: Check for flash access restricitons in read_flash()

- flashrom: Check for flash access restricitons in verify_range()

- flashrom: Check for flash access restricitons in write_flash()

- flashrom: Check for flash access restrictions in erase path

- flashrom: Use WP-based unlocking on opaque masters

- ni845x_spi: Fix signed - unsigned comparisons

- flashrom: only perform WP unlock for write/erase operations

- tree: Rename master branch to main

- serial: Fix sp_flush_incoming for serprog TCP connections

- Makefile,meson.build: Add support for Sphinx versions prior to 4.x

- Makefile: Fix cleanup for Sphinx versions prior to 4.x

- Makefile: Fix version string for non-Git builds

- serprog protocol: Add SPI Mode and CS Mode commands

- util/list_yet_unsupported_chips.h: Fix path

- flashrom_udev.rules: Add rule for CH347

- Add documentation for pico-serprog

- cli_classic: Defer flashrom_init calibration until after options parsing

- hwaccess_x86_io: Fix Android compilation with bionic libc