Patent ID: 8245053

Claim:
An information handling system comprising: a system planar, said system planar comprising a controller; and a removable trusted platform module (TPM) subsystem module that is removably coupled to said system planar, said TPM subsystem module comprising a TPM device and non-volatile memory that is separate from the TPM device, the TPM device itself including a TPM cryptographic processor or microcontroller together with associated memory; wherein binding information unique to said system planar is permanently written in said non-volatile memory that is separate from the TPM device of said removable TPM subsystem module; wherein said controller of said system planar is coupled by a dedicated direct communication path that is separate from the TPM device to directly read said non-volatile memory of said removable TPM subsystem module across the separate dedicated direct communication path in a manner that is separate and independent from the TPM device, the controller being further configured to read said binding information from said non-volatile memory of said removable TPM subsystem module; wherein said controller of said system planar is configured to only allow said information handling system to boot if said binding information read directly back across the separate dedicated direct communication path from said non-volatile memory of said removable TPM subsystem module matches unique information associated with said system planar in a manner that verifies binding of said TPM subsystem module to said system planar separately from said TPM device upon every attempted boot of the information handling system; and where the TPM device that is separate from the non-volatile memory is configured to perform TPM processing tasks including cryptographic key generation and control, remote attestation, sealing, binding, random number generation, and hardware authentication for the information handling system.