Why very few modern motherboards are equipped with TPM?

Question

I've heard bitlocker will be so common that microsoft will require every computer to have TPM to run windows 9.

Yet I just called gigabyte. Gigabyte says that not one of their motherboard is equipped with TPM.

One of their motherboards is equipped with a TPM module header, but a gigabyte dealer in Indonesia told me they know nobody that sells TPM modules to plug to that header.

I mean, TPM is very important if we do not want government officials, thieves, or anyone to look at our data. No matter how legal our work is, they tend to find something. If anything, they can know our passwords if they can access our hard disk.

Yet very few motherboards are equipped with TPM. Simply lack of sell.

I find it hard to believe.

Is there an explanation for this?

Answer 1

My guess would be following:

Very few users know what they want or need these days. In fact average computer user needs to be told what he wants or needs. This is effectively done by advertising. You do not decide that you need a quad-core processor running at 4Ghz, in most cases you are told through clever advertising that this is exactly what you need and that this is the best on the market. So you go and buy it. Same applies to security components like TPM

So basic answer to your question is: TPM is not advertised enough, most average users don't have a clue about what it is and why would they need it. This is why they are not willing to pay money for it. This creates a situation with the lack of demand for such products and obviously MB manufacturers don't find it profitable to include TPM on their devices.

Interesting question that arises is why is TPM not advertised in the world were cyber security has become a major subject? We do get excessive advertising of antiviruses that we don't need, protocol encryption algorithms, that are volnurable anyway etc, but not TPM. My guess on this would be - there is still no reliable way to control the production of TPM modules and develop backdoors for each and every one of them and because of that most governments would not be particularly happy if TPM would flood the market.

Don't worry, as soon as security services of world leading countries will find reliable way to make your TPM useless - it will be advertised all over TV and Internet and everyone will have to buy it.

Answer 2

TPM comes with a lot of Enterprise/server motherboards, my HP Elitebook has one built in and comes as standard.

TPM has been sold more to business's and governments as a way to secure their data easily hence its more prevalent in enterprise settings.

Consumer grade kit wont come with it because many people wont know what it is actually for and wont use it, so the manufacturer wont bother wasting the money and time needed to include this is consumer grade motherboards - best you can hope for is a TPM header and buy a module.

Answer 3

It's not there because it adds cost to the motherboard, and gives very little benefit to the average end user. Even if you want to do something that TPM enables (like a very secure boot of encrypted storage) you have to decide whether you can actually trust:

• That the TPM is necessary and helpful for that application
• That the TPM doesn't have any bugs
• That the TPM's manufacturer didn't include any back doors
• That whatever keys and algorithms that the TPM supports aren't somehow broken in the future.

That's a lot of trust to put in a commodity PC manufacturer.

So, in effect, it doesn't solve many problems for the general end user. A few enterprises can make use of them, but the average user? No benefit, and the average user is VERY price sensitive.