[coreboot - Support #626] Haswell Trad/T440p: Support for 16GB DDR3L modules with NRI?

Issue #626 has been updated by Angel Pons.


Thanks for the logs. Margins look absolutely fine (yes, read timings have a bit of a positive offset, but I have seen this behaviour on all Haswell boards I've tried NRI on). I'm pretty sure this is a hardware limitation so the only thing left to do here is for me to add a check in NRI to check for non-10-bit column addresses and report that they're unsupported.

Aside: I have noticed that your logs say the following: `SF size 0x2800000 does not correspond to CONFIG_ROM_SIZE 0xc00000!!`
The T440p has 12 MiB of flash (8 MiB + 4 MiB), but the IFD is reporting a much larger size (40 MiB total, probably 8 MiB + 32 MiB). This means the flash component sizes in your IFD are misconfigured. This is not a coreboot issue and this should NEVER happen if you used the IFD that came with your mainboard. However, if you're using an IFD from some other source (e.g. you flashed a full libreboot image with a "cleaned" ME firmware), please check if they have already fixed this in an update, otherwise raise an issue in their bugtracker.

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Support #626: Haswell Trad/T440p: Support for 16GB DDR3L modules with NRI?
https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/626#change-2232

* Author: Christian Schrötter
* Status: In Progress
* Priority: Normal
* Assignee: Angel Pons
* Category: chipset configuration
* Target version: none
* Start date: 2026-01-29
* Affected hardware: Haswell Trad (e.g. T440p)
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There are rumors, that 16GB modules may be supported with NRI, even though the original BIOS nor the MRC blob support them in a T440p. I really wanted to test this myself, but unfortunately with limited success...

I have tested two different RAM modules over the last two months:
* ~~ZimaBlade - 16GB PC3L-10600S~~ (returned to seller)
* Micron MT16KTF2G64HZ-1G6A1 - 16GB PC3L-12800S

Both showed identical errors:
* The graphics output (via VGA) is mangled and unusable. Only a small "condensed" area is visible.
* EDK2 and memtest86+ start successfully (with the mentioned graphics issue), but memtest86+ crashes after a few seconds and causes a reset/reboot.
* GRUB2 loads successfully, but Debian (12/13) hangs at some point. Probably during kernel initialization.

The 16GB module from Micron starts up in other devices (Igel M340C + Lenovo T450s) without any problems and survives a memtest86+ over several hours. So it doesn't appear to be defective.

I then added various other 2/4/8 GB modules in addition to the 16GB module. Funnily enough, this changes the graphics output! Now every second line (each consisting of a few pixels in height) is displayed correctly. Unfortunately, this does not change the fact, that memtets86+ crashes and Debian can't boot.

I purchased a USB dongle (with a FT232H chip) specifically to read all Coreboot debug logs and have attached these along with my build configuration for v25.12!

I would like to know whether 16GB modules are really not supported in a T440p with NRI, or whether this could be a bug? I am happy to execute further tests or flash specific commits.


---Files--------------------------------
defconfig (650 Bytes)
1769676506-2512-nri-2gb.log (51.8 KB)
1769677242-2512-nri-16gb-bottom.log (137 KB)
1769677400-2512-nri-16gb-top.log (85.4 KB)
1769677514-2512-nri-16gb+2gb.log (152 KB)
1769677649-2512-nri-16gb.log (85.4 KB)
1772412470-c940d20-nri-16gb-top.fixed.log (151 KB)
1772412665-c940d20-nri-16gb-bottom.fixed.log (150 KB)
1772412740-c940d20-nri-16gb+2gb.fixed.log (189 KB)
1772413121-c940d20-nri-2gb-bottom.fixed.log (105 KB)


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