UEFI 2.11 Released With PI 1.9 Bringing LoongArch & RNG Additions

On Tuesday the UEFI Forum released the UEFI 2.11 specification alongside the Platform Initialization (PI) 1.9 specification.

PI 1.9 adds support for the LoongArch Chinese CPU architecture, new RNG capabilities, and more. UEFI 2.11 meanwhile brings updates to memory management/allocation, corrections to the EFI KMS protocol, and other additions.

The UEFI 2.11 and PI 1.9 highlights include:

Key UEFI 2.11 Capabilities:

- Updates to memory management and allocation, such as the new memory attribute for hit plug and Arm memory allocation mandates

- Enhancements to protocols, algorithms and boot management

- Corrections to EFI_KMS_PROTOCOL, new crypto algorithms and support for Proxy Host URI in HTTP Boot

- Improvements to error handling and documentation updates, including Common Platform Error Record (CPER) definitions and Arm processor error information

Key PI 1.9 Capabilities:

- Expands algorithm options by providing enhanced security with additional cryptographic algorithms for signed Firmware Volume (FV) and signed sections extending beyond the previous RSA2048_SHA256

- Adds Random Number Generator (RNG) PEIM-to-PEIM Interface (PPI) to serve as an entropy source for seeding other cryptographic services, allowing platforms to provide RNG services in PEI across binary boundaries effectively

- Includes new protocol for Multiple SPI Regions with varying block erase sizes, enhancing flexibility and functionality

- Adds support for LoongArch architecture, broadening the range of supported systems

More details on the UEFI 2.11 and PI 1.9 updates via UEFI.org.