ME is still required; that strap option that the article describes just disables the stuff like it's network stack and remote admin facilities after it has started the Intel cores. It is still required to be on for power management for instance.
Also, interestingly you can swap out the terms on your paragraph and it's still true
> When an Intel CPU starts booting the CPU is completely disconnected (technically in reset state) and the ME is the one that starts the system. You can have a look at the boot flash partitions and you will see some of the binary blobs used by the ME to both start the CPU and run its own ThreadX OS.
Although albeit, on newer MEs they switched from ThreadX to Minix. The ME is very very very similar.
"Technically" it's not a guest relationship, the ARM cores start in EL3 (above hypervisor mode in secure mode).
And none of this show any perf costs to having a management core (except maybe some minimal bandwidth pressure?)
Also, interestingly you can swap out the terms on your paragraph and it's still true
> When an Intel CPU starts booting the CPU is completely disconnected (technically in reset state) and the ME is the one that starts the system. You can have a look at the boot flash partitions and you will see some of the binary blobs used by the ME to both start the CPU and run its own ThreadX OS.
Although albeit, on newer MEs they switched from ThreadX to Minix. The ME is very very very similar.
"Technically" it's not a guest relationship, the ARM cores start in EL3 (above hypervisor mode in secure mode).
And none of this show any perf costs to having a management core (except maybe some minimal bandwidth pressure?)