Build your own system firmware. This book helps you understand system firmware architecture and minimalistic design, and provides a specialized knowledge of firmware development. The book includes guidance on understanding the system firmware build procedure, integrating pieces of firmware and allowing configuration, updating system firmware, creating a development infrastructure for allowing multi-party collaboration in firmware development, and gaining advanced system firmware debugging knowledge.

After reading the book you will be able to assume better control while developing your own firmware and know how to interact with native hardware while debugging. You will understand key principles for future firmware development using newer technology, and be ready for the introduction of modern safe programming languages for firmware development. Detailed system firmware development case studies using a futuristic approach cover:

• Future scalable system firmware development models
• Types of firmware development (system firmware, device firmware, manageability firmware)
• Tools and their usage while creating system firmware
• How to build infrastructure for seamless firmware development using a multi-party development model
• Debugging methodologies used during various phases of firmware product development
• Setting up key expectations for future firmware, including thinner firmware footprints and faster execution time, easier configuration, and increased transparent security

What You Will Learn

• Understand the system firmware working model of the future
• Gain knowledge to say goodbye to proprietary firmware for different types of firmware development
• Know the different types of tools required for creating firmware source code before flashing the final image into the boot device of the embedded system
• Develop skills to understand the failure in firmware or in the system and prepare the debugging environment to root cause the defects
• Discern the platform minimal security requirement
• Optimize the system firmware boot time based on the target hardware requirement
• Comprehend the product development cycle using open source firmware development

Who This Book Is For

Embedded firmware and software engineers migrating the product development from closed source firmware to open source firmware for product adaptation needs as well as engineers working for open source firmware development. A secondary audience includes engineers working on various bootloaders such as open source firmware, UEFI, and Slim Bootloader development, as well as undergraduate and graduate students working on developing firmware skill sets.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Spotlight on Future Firmware

Chapter 2: Tools

Chapter 3: Infrastructure for Building Your Own Firmware

Chapter 4: System Firmware Debugging

Chapter 5: Security at Its Core

Chapter 6: Looking at the Future of System Firmware

About the Authors

Subrata Banik is a firmware engineer with more than a decade in the computer industry. He has acquired experience in system firmware design, development, and debugging across various firmware architectures like UEFI, coreboot, and Slim Bootloader for x86 and ARM platforms. Subrata has profound experience with platform enablement, which had led to working on all leading PC makers’ products. Subrata is an active member of open-source firmware (OSF) development across different projects like coreboot, oreboot, flashrom, and EDKII, where he is one of the leading contributors in open firmware (coreboot) development. Subrata has received multiple US patents and is very passionate about learning new technology and sharing knowledge among enthusiast engineers. Subrata has presented technical talks at industry events such as the Open Source Firmware conference, Institute for Security and Technology, and Intel Developer Forum.

When not writing or working, he enjoys watching sports (especially football) or spending time with his daughter. A fun fact about Subrata is he is a strong believer in time travel.

Vincent Zimmer has been working on embedded firmware for the last 30 years. Vincent has contributed to or created firmware spanning various firmware initiatives, including the Extensible Firmware Interface, where Vincent presently leads the Security subteam in the UEFI Forum. Vincent has co-authored various papers and books. He is also a co-inventor on over 450 US patents.

Ron Minnich is a software engineer at Google. He has been writing firmware for 40 years, starting with the z80 and 6800. He’s also a long-time contributor in the Unix, BSD, Plan 9, and Linux communities. He started the LinuxBIOS project in 1999, which was renamed to coreboot in 2008 and is now used in tens of millions of Chromebooks. His most recent effort, LinuxBoot, is now part of the Linux Foundation and aims to bring the benefits of a full Linux kernel to several firmware environments, including coreboot, u-boot, and UEFI

Christian Walter is a firmware engineer who started working with open source firmware five years ago. Christian is passionate about open source and is heavily involved in

various open source firmware projects like coreboot, LinuxBoot, and EDKII for different

architectures. Christian is the cofounder of the Open Source Firmware Foundation and is actively involved in defining specifications around open source firmware. He is part of 9elements, which is one of the main contributors within the open source firmware ecosystem driving the community into an open world. Christian has been involved in multiple technical talks around open source firmware and its development model for the industry, and he has held multiple talks around testing and building an ecosystem for open source firmware.