Open Silicon Firmware Interface

Open Silicon Firmware Interface (openSFI) workstream

Problem Statement:

Platform firmware design lacks the scalability needed to efficiently support diverse silicon vendor host SoCs, even when platforms share the same memory and I/O components. Current implementations are heavily dependent on vendor-specific architectures, lacking a unified abstraction layer for seamless code reuse and standardization. This fragmentation increases complexity, prolongs development cycles, and results in inefficiencies across firmware development, debugging, maintenance, and resource allocation, driving up costs and reducing operational efficiency across the ecosystem.

Vision:

To empower the industry with an open, scalable, and sustainable silicon firmware interface that enables timelyeasy integration and broader adoption of diverse silicon by platform integrators and firmware vendors. Through efficiency in architecture & design, openness, and collaboration, we aim to accelerate innovation and foster impactful, sustainable growth in-line with OCP’s core tenets.

Mission:

Unify Silicon Initialization Interface:

Develop a unified, open-source Silicon Firmware Interface (SFI) that bridges different vendor silicon initialization approaches, AMD’s openSIL and Intel’s FSP, enabling consistent, cross-platform silicon initialization and potentially providing a foundation for future architecture initialization beyond x86.

Simplify Platform Integration:

Minimize the need for dedicated vertical teams to manage separate silicon initialization workflows, optimizing development, validation, and maintenance resources for platform integrators and firmware vendors.

Can we add a statement about improving platform security? Perhaps by reducing attack surfaces?

Enhance Resource Efficiency:

Optimize engineering resources by minimizing redundant efforts in firmware development, validation and maintenance, improving both cost-efficiency and time-to-market.

Promote Sustainability:

Reduce carbon emissions through efficient resource utilization, streamlined development, and eliminating duplicate engineering work.

Foster Industry Collaboration:

Bring together silicon vendors, firmware developers, platform integrators, hyperscalers, and the broader ecosystem to drive consensus on OCP-driven industry-standard interface.

Ensure Scalability and Flexibility:

Create a flexible interface at a level of abstraction that accommodates diversity of current and future silicon architectures, technologies, and heterogeneous compute environments, supporting long-term scalability.

Bridge Gaps Between Ecosystems:

Create parity in approaches used for all OCP SoC architectures. Address the integration challenges specific to x86 architectures, aiming for parity with the streamlined approach seen in ARM-based platforms. During the first phase, the team will focus on SoCs based on the x86 architecture and in subsequent phases will extend to other SoC architectures relevant to OCP members.

Align with OCP Tenets:

Uphold the core OCP principles of efficiency, scalability, sustainability, and openness, while impacting all phases of the workstream’s development and adoption.

In-Scope:

Common Silicon Firmware Interface: Define an open, abstraction layer for silicon initialization that can be adopted across multiple vendors. · Where feasible, allow extensibility to support future SoC architectures.

• Architecture Framework Specification: Develop a clear, vendor-neutral specification to guide implementation and ensure interoperability.
• Proof of Concepts (PoCs): Team may create framework PoCs where possible or applicable to vet the proposed interface and demonstrate use cases.
• Alignment with x86EAG (x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group) and OCP Tenets: Ensure the framework supports ease of integration in the open hardware & software stack ecosystem through a focus on security, efficiency, sustainability, and industry collaboration.
• Industry Collaboration: Engage silicon vendors, firmware vendors, platform integrators, and hyperscalers to drive adoption and alignment. In addition, collaboration with firmware vendors and hyperscalers will be critical in shaping the architecture definition and developing PoCs.

Out-of-Scope:

• Support for non-x86 ISAs: The scope is strictly limited to Intel and AMD x86 host SoCs. Other architectures, such as ARM, RISC-V, and Power, are out of scope.
• Unification of Silicon Initialization Firmware: The goal is not to merge all silicon initialization firmware into a single solution but to provide a common interface for interoperability.
• Firmware standardization for non-host silicon: The focus is on platform host SoCs, excluding standalone accelerators, GPUs, networking devices, and storage controllers unless they are integrated as part of an x86 host SoC.
• End-to-end platform firmware solutions: openSFI defines an interface specification, not a complete firmware stack or end-to-end platform firmware implementation.
• Vendor-specific firmware implementations: The initiative does not dictate how silicon vendors implement their underlying initialization firmware, only how they expose a standardized interface.

Workstream Team Leads:

Organization	Representative
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)	Raj Kapoor
Intel	Allison Goodman

Workstream Team Members:

Organization	Representative
3mdeb	Piotr Król
9elements	Christian Walter
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)	Raj Kapoor
	Rennie, Albert
	Roth, Martin
	Gopal, Pradeep
	Wilson, Mark
	Grimes, Paul
AMI US Holdings Inc.	Srini Narayana
	Felix Polyudov
ARM	Senthil Ramakrishnan
	Jose Marinho
ByteDance	Nill Ge
Google	Ian Goegebuer
	Amber Huffman
	Bertrand Achard
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPe)	Jean-Marie Verdun
Insyde Software	Tim Lewis
	Gentile, Stephen
Intel	Allison Goodman
	Michael D Kinney
Microsoft	Giri Mudusuru
MiTAC	Hancock Chang
Open Source Firmware Foundation (OSFF)	Christian Walter