9elements Security Talks Up AMD openSIL Open-Source Firmware With 4th Gen EPYC

For weeks we have been eager to learn more about AMD openSIL that will formally be announced at the OCP Prague event later this week. In anticipation of that event, AMD last week revealed the initial details around this open-source firmware push.

Last week's article shed a lot of light into AMD openSIL that is working to make it easier to support Coreboot as well as the likes of the Rust-written Oreboot on modern AMD Zen platforms. The initial focus is on supporting 4th Gen EPYC "Genoa" platforms but AMD's graphic last week also made mention of AMD Ryzen.

AMD hasn't yet published this open-source code but the AMD openSIL components are said to be releasing soon. Again, the actual announcement isn't set until 20 April at the Open Compute Project event in Prague.

Today 9elements Security published a blog post outlining that this cyber security and firmware consulting firm has been engaging with AMD over this open-source firmware solution.

"We are thrilled to announce that 9elements, the largest open-source firmware vendor worldwide, has joined forces with AMD to enable systems using their new 4th Gen EPYC CPUs to run with open-source firmware. This groundbreaking collaboration marks a pivotal milestone in the open-source firmware movement and paves the way for new industry standards.

As part of our collaboration, AMD developed a revolutionary library called AMD openSIL, which is responsible for the silicon initialization of their cutting-edge server systems. In contrast to Intel's Firmware Support Package (FSP) - a binary that coreboot calls into - openSIL is open-source and can be directly linked into coreboot. This offers substantial benefits for the open-source community, as they can now build upon and connect to the open-source code directly, rather than relying on unknown binary blobs that lack transparency."

The 9elements blog post is a bit light and doesn't reveal much more beyond what AMD initially disclosed last week, but for those interested can find the post on 9esec.io.