News Linus Torvalds Is Tired of AMD's 'Stupid' fTPM Errors

[Admin]

The Linux creator criticized the persistence of AMD fTPM errors, which should have been eradicated by a BIOS patch last year.

Linus Torvalds Is Tired of AMD's 'Stupid' fTPM Errors : Read more

 

[Giroro]

It's important to leave the TPM disabled.
Otherwise, Windows will someday randomly "upgrade" your system the hardware you paid for to Windows 11 without your consent. A fate worse than death.

 

[bigdragon]

After a couple patches and BIOS updates intended to fix the stuttering, my 5900X x570 still did it frequently. I disabled fTPM completely on that system. No more stuttering! No more Windows 11 fullscreen spam from Microsoft either. AMD really needs to get their act together. There's no excuse for the problems their fTPM is having.

As an aside, my 5800X b450 machine does not stutter and fTPM has been left on. Both machines have ASRock boards.

 

[richardvday]

This is priceless 🤣
Couldn't agree more 👏

 

[RichardtST]

Enabling fTPM simply means that you completely give up ownership of your hardware. It does not in any way shape or form add security. It adds control, at your expense. They control your hardware, you do not. 100% get into the BIOS and disable it.

 

[wiak]

Windows Update & fTPM is root of all evil, always makes your pc either crash, stop working with software and devices and stutter

 

[rluker5]

Windows 10 support ends in 2025. Windows 11 does have some nice features, like wake from sleep without a pin. Which is nice in a secure environment like your house.

It's $25-35 for a TPM module.

If fTPM is a problem, just get dTPM.

 

[Amdlova]

Easy move to intel

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

TPM has already long been defeated

Trusted platform module security defeated in 30 minutes, no soldering required

Sometimes, locking down a laptop with the latest defenses isn’t enough.

arstechnica.com

AMD TPM Exploit: faulTPM Attack Defeats BitLocker and TPM-Based Security (Updated)

Zen 2 and Zen 3 are vulnerable to voltage glitching.

www.tomshardware.com

Two security flaws in the TPM 2.0 specs put cryptographic keys at risk

Security researchers recently discovered a couple of flaws in the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 reference library specification, two dangerous buffer overflow vulnerabilities that could potentially impact...

www.techspot.com

It's pointless to put our trust in fTPM or dTPM.

We need something else, something better than TPM.

 

[suryasans]

Apparently, AMD is using the RAM module as the temporary storage to store the result of fTPM housekeeping and save it later when the PC is shutting down.

 

[Indicajones]

i upgrade every gen and have been for last 20+ years(its a personal problem). Switched AM5 from 12900k and it was a massive downgrade in everything but benchmark stats. For some reason one STILL has to disable "USB selective suspend setting" . This finally fixed my massive stuttering on boot. Everything is up to date and running QVL. Fine wine..... blahhhh

 

[suryasans]

Apparently, AMD is using the RAM module as the temporary storage to store the result of fTPM housekeeping and save it later when the PC is shutting down.

Saved it in the BIOS ROM.

 

[Valaska]

Originally I thought I had fTPM stuttering but it ended up being a simple option that I had to turn on with virtualization and in the security menu so a lot of people will have to likely just do that.

I think Linus is completely wrong here and it's laughable that people are still worried about Linux when it's such a small insignificant segment of the desktop architecture... His alternative is quite slow it will eat a lot of performance and with ftpm generally working now there's no reason

The fixes have definitely worked the unfortunate thing is you'll have to run a ddu, and sometimes a reformat of Windows itself. Update the BIOS and chipset and it should be good

 

[Makaveli]

I switched from the fTPM to dTPM after I upgraded from a 5800X to 5800X3D chip.

Why?

"5800x3d tpm attestation not supported"

Didn't want to wait for MS to fix this.

Ryzen 7 5800x3d tpm attestation not supported

I have an ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi, the system originally born with a 5600x. Recently I updated it with a 5800X3D. I noticed that now the TPM window under the Windows Security app report that "TPM Attestation" is "Not Supported" while "TPM Memory" is "Ready". This is on Windows...

community.amd.com

 

[RUSerious]

Had I been paying enough attention to these stuttering issues, I might have just gone with a dTMP before upgrading to a 5900x on a Windows 11 system. Guess my Zen2 system ran so well on Win10&11 I was a bit too trusting WRT AMD hardware.

 

[nimbulan]

I experienced the fTPM stuttering once or twice daily on my x570 board, and the BIOS update completely fixed it.

 

[Gillerer]

I think Linus is completely wrong here and it's laughable that people are still worried about Linux when it's such a small insignificant segment of the desktop architecture...

It's largely not about desktop. Linux is a dominant OS in servers, where customers want all the security features enabled and functioning flawlessly.

 

[RedBear87]

I can't speak for the Linux side, but when I started having stuttering issues on Windows I made a couple of easy decisions:
- I've disabled fTPM, which I had enabled only for testing on Windows 10.
- I've decided that I won't upgrade to Windows 11 until they will literally force me to do it, either at gunpoint or using some fantastic game that will only run on W11 as bait.

Since then I've not had any issue whatsoever.

 

[palladin9479]

It's largely not about desktop. Linux is a dominant OS in servers, where customers want all the security features enabled and functioning flawlessly.

Eh nobody in the server world is using TPM, it's a feature build as a sort of EZ Mode endpoint protection. You use FDE and then store the encryption keys inside the TPM module and rely on the TPM security to protect them and if the user forgets, you can use the admin key to recover the device. The real way to do this is through something like Vera Crypt where you do FDE then use a passphrase. Of course users tend to forget those then expect the IT Department to all "Super TV Geek" and magically decrypt their device and recover the data.

Servers store everything on disk arrays and the hypervisor takes care of any volume encryption, if that's even wanted since walking out a datacenter with a disk array is rather ... difficult.

Furthermore TPM only protects the data from a casual thief, it doesn't do squat against a determined adversary as it's easily defeated through hardware bypass, or through the government agency just getting the decryption keys from the manufacturer.

 

[jackt]

Is there still someone that uses windows ?

 

[jackt]

Originally I thought I had fTPM stuttering but it ended up being a simple option that I had to turn on with virtualization and in the security menu so a lot of people will have to likely just do that.

I think Linus is completely wrong here and it's laughable that people are still worried about Linux when it's such a small insignificant segment of the desktop architecture... His alternative is quite slow it will eat a lot of performance and with ftpm generally working now there's no reason

The fixes have definitely worked the unfortunate thing is you'll have to run a ddu, and sometimes a reformat of Windows itself. Update the BIOS and chipset and it should be good

You must be the smart one...

 

[evdjj3j]

Is there still someone that uses windows ?

You must be the smart one...

 

[Dr3ams]

Don't know what everyone is complaining about. I'm using Windows 11 Pro (with hardware updates turned off) and I have fTPM enabled. Not a single problem.

...and the only way I would ever use Linux, is if it would support all the games and apps I use...which none of the distros do.

 

[purpleduggy]

Is there still someone that uses windows ?

there is zero reason to use windows. gaming is better on Linux because of Steam and protondb. older windows games run better with wine and lutris than on modern windows. emulators run better on linux. gpu drivers are better on linux. and if you really want windows for something obscure, you can run it in a vm.

 

[RUSerious]

there is zero reason to use windows. gaming is better on Linux because of Steam and protondb. older windows games run better with wine and lutris than on modern windows. emulators run better on linux. gpu drivers are better on linux. and if you really want windows for something obscure, you can run it in a vm.

Statements like his is why desktop linux users have no credibility. But, you do you.