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April 11th, 2016 22:00

Dell BIOS Intel SGX Not being Enabled

Hello, I have recently purchased Precision 3510 laptops with the intention of using them for research on Intel's new Software Guard Extensions (SGX). These laptops come with the required CPUs that support these new CPU instructions and (we thought) the required BIOS support as well.

In the BIOS for the laptops, there is an option for enabling SGX, but when enabled we are not able to install any of the official Intel SDKs on Windows OR Linux. Additionally, we ran an SGX test program that would dynamically detect the SGX features using CPUID and Machine Specific Registers (MSRs). It successfully detected the SGX hardware support (i.e. the SGX instructions are physically on the CPU chip), but it showed that the BIOS flags controlling the startup of SGX were not enabled (possible SGX specific MSRs have not been set). The specific CPU flag that needs to be set is described here: https://github.com/ayeks/SGX-hardware . Here is a quote from that page that describes what is needed for SGX to work, "The CPU and the motherboard BIOS must support SGX. SGX is turned off by default and must enabled via MSR.IA32_Feature_Control.SGX_Enable. Only the BIOS can make changes to the IA32_Feature_Control".
For reference, we are using the latest BIOS version for our model - version A07. Also, the CPU we have is the Intel Core i5 - 6300HQ CPU @ 2.3GHz.

I hope we can resolve this issue in a timely manner as we are not able to use these laptops for their intended purpose (SGX research).

April 28th, 2016 01:00

Hi,

I am looking to buy a Dell Precision 3510. Would you mind sharing some info on the machine in terms of durability, performance & mainly battery life on continuous usage.

Your reply will be highly appreciated!

Pankaj :)

May 8th, 2016 04:00

I have the same issue.  I've been patiently waiting for a BIOS update and thought that the latest (Latitude_E5x70_Precision_3510_1.05.00.exe) would fix the issue.  Unfortunately not.

File Name: Latitude_E5x70_Precision_3510_1.05.00.exe

Importance: Recommended
Description: Windows/DOS (12.96 MB)
Release Date: 05 May 2016
Version: 1.05.00 ,1.05.00
Last Updated: 05 May 2016

1 Message

May 27th, 2016 22:00

Hi,

I have the same issue with my Dell Precision 7510.
I've also tried updating the bios, but no luck.

The latest bios i am using is Precision_7x10_1.04.14

Anyone has some fix suggestions?

Thanks!

3 Posts

May 30th, 2016 08:00

My fix was to buy an HP Envy x360.

This is definitely a BIOS issue (not officially, but with a cross-reference from Intel and CPUID flag listings).

The entry shows the problem:

CPUID 0x7 : ebx bit 2 set - shows CPU is SGX capable
CPUID 0x00000007 eax=0x00000000 ebx=0x029c6fbf ecx=0x00000000 edx=0x00000000

CPUID 0x12 : eax bit 0 not set - shows that BIOS has not enabled it completely
CPUID 0x00000012 eax=0x00000000 ebx=0x00000000 ecx=0x00000000 edx=0x00000000

Here is a dump of the complete CPUID listings for my precision http://pastebin.com/UykjzBTM

July 12th, 2016 15:00

Latest BIOS update for the Precision 3510 now properly supports SGX.

Dell Latitude E5270/E5470/E5570 and Precision 3510 System BIOS  

File Name: Latitude_E5x70_Precision_3510_1.7.3.exe
Importance: Urgent
Description: Windows/DOS (12.89 MB)
Release Date: 07 Jul 2016
Version: 1.7.3 ,1.7.3
Last Updated: 07 Jul 2016

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