Intel's Simple Firmware Interface Being Killed Off With Linux 5.12

Intel's "Simple Firmware Interface" that dates back to the company's early Atom-powered mobile days is being eliminated with the in-development Linux 5.12 kernel.

More than one decade ago with the Intel Moorestown platform, Simple Firmware Interface (SFI) was envisioned as a solution for lightweight devices in place of a complete ACPI implementation. Intel hasn't employed the Simple Firmware Interface as part of their platform design in years while ACPI is alive and well. Last year Intel engineers marked SFI as "obsolete" within the Linux kernel and confirmed Intel had no plans of resurrecting the Simple Firmware Interface.

Now for Linux 5.12, the Simple Firmware Interface support code within the kernel is being eliminated.

The pull eliminating SFI from the kernel was already merged. Eliminating the Simple Firmware Interface code lightened up the kernel by around eight thousand lines of code.

Removal of SFI from mainline is met by Linux 5.12 also eliminating the rest of Intel's MID support from the kernel during the early Moorestown / Medfield days. Farewell!

In addition to this Intel MID/SFI spring cleaning, Linux 5.12 also is seeing support for a number of obsolete/unmaintained ARM platforms removed as well.

The Linux 5.12 kernel merge window should be wrapping up this weekend while the stable release should be out around the end of April.