Kohaku: ME disabled results in audio not working, DSP boot timeout

Bug Reports Firmware Bugs
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1

System Details

  • Device: kohaku (Samsung Galaxy Chromebook)
  • OS: Linux (CachyOS, linux-cachyos kernel)
  • Firmware Type: UEFI Full ROM
  • Firmware Version: 2606.1
  • Internal storage type: NVMe

Summary of the Issue

With Intel ME disabled via the firmware script, all analog audio is dead aplay -l reports no soundcards. Re-enabling ME restores audio completely. The failure is a DSP boot timeout on every boot.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Flash UEFI Full ROM on kohaku, selecting the option to disable Intel ME.
  2. Install a current Linux distro with sof-firmware present (CachyOS in my case) and boot.
  3. Run aplay -l no soundcards found. dmesg | grep sof shows the -110 DSP init failure above.
  4. Re-run the script and re-enable ME, reboot audio works normally.

Expected Behavior

Internal audio should work with ME disabled, as it does with ME enabled. Is this known for kohaku or other Comet Lake Chromebooks? Is there anything coreboot-side that could handle the audio power/clock sequencing when ME is halted, or is ME-enabled the only path to working internal audio on this board?

Happy to provide acpidump output, full dmesg from either state, or test builds.

2

that’s not how it works. The ME loads the DSP firmware. Disable the ME, no DSP firmware.