Open Platform Firmware

Open Platform Firmware (OPF) is an open development project whose goal is to let system owners "own their firmware" by moving the point of control to the owner, who must be able to change firmware and share it with other owners. Since March 2021, OCP server badging has required OPF support. OPF is open source, but vendors may deliver compliant firmware either fully open, as with IBM's Power 9 systems, or as componentized binary images such as UEFI into which open source components can be integrated. LinuxBoot and OpenEDK2 are examples. Its scope spans all data center processor architectures, cloud operating systems, compute, storage and network devices, tooling, and security.

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Steering Committee Representative

Dong Wei

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About This Project

Open Platform Firmware (OPF) is an open development project whose goal is to allow OCP owners to “own their firmware” — to move the point of control of firmware to the system owner. Owners must be able to change firmware and share it, including any binary components, with other owners. Since March 2021, OCP badging for servers has required that systems support OPF.

OPF is open source. However, OPF does not require vendors to deliver firmware in open source form. OPF open source components are designed to be easily integrated into a non-open-source firmware image; for example, such integration has been occurring since 2017 on the LinuxBoot project, where Linux is integrated into UEFI images as a UEFI driver.

There are several ways for vendors to deliver OPF-compliant systems. The most convenient, as in IBM’s Power 9 systems, is to deliver firmware in open source form, buildable and installable by the owner. Another is to deliver firmware in a binary but componentized form, which allows open source components to be built and installed in the firmware image. UEFI is an example of componentized firmware, allowing components in the image to be modified, removed, and replaced. Although a binary firmware image is far less desirable than full open source, the OPF specification allows it.

Two examples of OPF can be seen today in the LinuxBoot (linuxboot.org) and OpenEDK2 projects. For examples of compliant open source systems, see IBM’s OPAL; for examples of compliant binary images, see UEFI.

Scope

The Open Platform Firmware Project covers:

Processor Architectures : support for all processor architectures found in the web-scale data center
Cloud Operating Systems : support for cloud operating systems
Device Classes : support for compute (general-purpose and AI/ML/FPGA), storage, and network devices
Tooling : development and deployment tools
Security : security features

Regular Project Calls

This project meets every other week on Thursday from 9-10 AM Pacific

Workstreams

Call Calendar

These meeting are recorded via audio and video. By participating you consent that these recordings may be made publicly available. Any presentation materials, proposals and meeting minutes are published on the respective project’s wiki page and are open to the public in accordance to OCP’s Bylaws and IP Policy. This can be found at http://www.opencompute.org/about/ocp-policies/. If you have any questions please contact OCP.