Platform firmware for the majority Intel® products is implemented based on Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) specifications. Historically, UEFI firmware has used closed source implementations to implement open standards. Every PC design had a unique implementation with its own issues. In order to address the increased focus on firmware security and cloud workloads, open standards must be paired with open source implementations.
The Minimum Platform Architecture (MPA) creates guidelines for how to design, enable improvements in quality and security on open source platform initialization development on firmware for Intel products.
Benefits
Moving firmware development to open source allows for improved customer engagements, builds transparency and trust, reduces overhead translating internal and external processes, and deploy fixes across the ecosystem more rapidly.
The figure below shows a firmware stack based on the Intel® Firmware Support Package (Intel® FSP) and the EDK II Minimum Platform package (MinPlatformPkg). This shows the relationship between open source, closed source components, and platform implementation.
Minimum Platform Architecture Provides
- Consistent boot flows and interfaces
- Approachable across the ecosystem
- Scalable from pre-silicon to derivatives
Resources
- Open Source Firmware Conference (OSFC) Presentation on Minimum Platform Architecture (Sept 2019)
- EDK II Minimum Platform Architecture Specification
- A Tour Beyond BIOS Open Source IA Firmware Platform Design Guide in EDK II (v 2)
- A Tour Beyond BIOS Using the Intel® Firmware Support Package (2.0) with EDK II
- A Tour Beyond BIOS Creating the Intel® Firmware Support Package (2.0) with EDK II
- Information on Tianocore.org