AMD BC-250 Continues Being Improved Under Linux With Patches Now Enabling The PSP

The AMD BC-250 as the product designed at the time for cryptocurrency mining and based on a cut-down Sony PlayStation 5 APU continues having an interesting second-life being re-tasked for Linux use from general purpose workloads to AI. Sent out this weekend were the latest Linux kernel patches for continuing to enable more of the BC-250. The AMD BC-250 continues to be interesting to hobbyists for those that happen to have this originally crypto-mining designed board or find it in the used part. The BC-250 as a reminder has six Zen 2 cores, a 24 CU RDNA2 GPU, and 16GB of GDDR6 video memory. Thanks to the open-source ecosystem the AMD BC-250 works on Linux with patches having brought RADV driver patches, adapting the AMDGPU driver for it, sensor monitoring, and other functionality for this repurposed hardware. Last year it was possible to find the AMD BC-250 used for around $100 USD as an interesting option for hobbyists. But with the wild PC component pricing these days, used BC-250 boards are fetching $200~350 USD as of writing. The latest work to report on now for Linux on the AMD BC-250 were a set of three patches posted this weekend for bringing up the AMD PSP Secure Processor. A few chances to the AMD Crypto Co-Processor (CCP) Linux driver are needed for getting the AMD BC-250's secure processor now working for encryption tasks. This patch series has the AMD CCP enablement for the BC-250. Those wanting to learn more about running Linux on the AMD BC-250 for different workloads can see this GitHub guide for a lot of documentation on the topic.