Open-Source Firmware for Host Processors is already quite prominent in the embedded world - we do have a lot of systems running on u-boot or nearly every Chromebook which is not older than 5 years is running on coreboot (Surprise, Surprise!). In addition Intel does officially support coreboot and their Firmware Support Package (FSP) in API mode, which is mandatory to be supported in coreboot. So future is looking bright for the embedded world - But what does the server market looks like?
Disclaimer: All information have been gathered together through public documents or talks on conferences - none of this information has been officially confirmed by any of the SoC vendors.
The answer is: It depends. It depends on whom you're talking to and which SoC vendor you are talking about.
Intel
Intel announced on the OCP Tech Week 2020 (again), that they will support FSP & coreboot on IceLake platforms and beyond - that means that the new upcoming platform Sapphire Rapids SP will also be supported with coreboot and FSP. Intel made quite a transformation over the latest generations of Xeon-SP platforms. There is a Proof of Concept with coreboot and FSP with Skylake-SP on the two socket server platform OCP Tioga Pass. This landed upstream in the coreboot repositories and is still maintained and functional. However the access to the FSP needed to build the platform is still under NDA and will not be maintained by Intel anymore.
The next step was to enable coreboot on the current generation Cooper Lake. This was done on the OCP Delta Lake server, which is a single socket server running coreboot and FSP. Interestingly, the OCP Delta Lake is the first server to pass the OCP Open System Firmware (OCP OSF) Guidelines which are mandatory now for new platforms to get the OCP Accepted Certification. More information on the OCP OSF initiative can be found online.
On the latest OCP OSF Project Call from April 29th, 2021 AMI, one of the biggest closed-source IBV, stated to get involved in Open-System Firmware. This should give the OSF community even more confidence that Intel holds on their open-source firmware strategy. What a bright future!
ARM
Ampere Computing is a regular guest on the OCP OSF call and presented their LinuxBoot solution on the latest OCP Tech Week 2020. Also Ampere's Arjun Khare presented the latest open-source firmware efforts on the FOSDEM 2021 - by nature ARM always has been more open when it comes to firmware than x86 SoC vendors. Ampere is definitely one of the companies to watch out for in the open-source firmware space.
In general ARM is picking up more and more speed in the server world and might be moving into the broader spectrum.
AMD
Even though AMD is heavily involved in open-source firmware on their consumer platforms - nothing is publicly known yet about their efforts to support open-source firmware on server platforms. Our friends from 3mdeb made a presentation at the Fosdem2021 about the current state of OSF on AMD platforms. Bottom line: Nothing is publicly known, however AMD is hiring coreboot developers (mainly for their mobile line) but rumors go around that they're working on something.
One main push could have been Ron's presentation on the Open-Source Firmware Conferences 2020 on booting an AMD Rome server board with open-source firmware - This has caught quite some attention. Still AMD has not made any information public - so we need to wait if there is more to come.
TL;DR
Intel is currently one of the top-pushing companies in the open-source firmware space. Also the OCP's Open System Firmware initiative is redefining the boundaries for server systems - overall we do quite some movement in the open-source firmware world - however most of the information is still not publicly confirmed and can only be shared through NDA's. We hope this changes in the future.
9elements does have a good working relationship with various SoC vendors - we specialized on building open-source firmware for scalable server systems and are able to support the newest generations. We are working on a regular basis with OCP and other scalable server systems.
If you would like to talk about OSF on a server system - Get in touch with us!
