Are Intel's PTT and TPM equivalent

Question

Are Intel PTT (Intel Platform Trust Technology) and TPM chips functionally equivalent?

If I had a board with a Intel processor that supported PTT, would I have the same functions as if I had a hardwired TPM chip, e.g support of Trousers, etc.?

How do you discover if a particular Intel processor supports PTT?

Answer 1

The Intel Platform Trust Technology (PTT) architecture, first introduced in 2013 on 4th generation chips, implements TPM functionality within the CPU. PTT fully supports all Microsoft’s requirements for firmware Trusted Platform Module (fTPM) 2.0 specification.

To your operating system and applications, there should be no discernible difference between using PTT or using a dedicated TPM chip.

You will typically have an option in your firmware configuration utility to enable or disable PTT if your processor supports a fTPM. On Windows, you can check if you are using a TPM or a fTPM (PTT) by running TPM.MSC. On Linux, check under /sys/class/tpm, sys/kernel/security/tpm or your boot log.

Answer 2

The easiest way is to check in the BIOS. Usually you have to enable it in the BIOS if you want to use it because the default is disabled on all the systems I've seen.