Intel Releases New BSD-Licensed Open-Source Firmware Implementation

At the European Open-Source Firmware Conference happening this week in Erlangen, Intel announced the open-source "Slimbootloader" (also referred to as Slim Bootloader) project that is quite exciting.

The Slim Bootloader is an EFI implementation based on Coreboot and available under the BSD license. The Slim Bootloader is an open-source boot firmware solution designed to be secure, lightweight, and optimized. Slim Bootloader is small, fast, extensible, can support multiple operating systems, and has functionality like firmware updates with UEFI.

Before getting too excited about this new open-source boot firmware solution from Intel, currently it just works on Apollo Lake platforms and isn't clear if they plan to backport this to other generations of Intel hardware.

The Apollo Lake coverage with the Slim Bootloader includes the UP Squared maker board, Intel Leaf Hill reference CRB, and MinnowBoard 3 Module. Slim Bootloader can also work with QEMU.

Still digging through the limited information that's public so far after being tipped off on the news from the OSFC conference, but for now those interested can check out the documentation and code.