Cloud Firmware China

Cloud Firmware is a highly customizable, lightweight server BIOS. Its design concept originates from the special requirements of CSPs for data center BIOS — needing to simultaneously support deeply customized server hardware, multi-SoC supply chains, and rapidly iterating business customization needs.

Cloud Firmware adopts ‘coreboot + LinuxBoot’ as its underlying architecture:

• coreboot — a lightweight, efficient boot program following the Linux model, combining rapid platform initialization capability with strong function customization.
• LinuxBoot — serving as coreboot’s OS loading payload, fully leverages the Linux ecosystem’s rich device drivers and boot medium access stacks, meeting data centers’ requirements for high-performance, high-security, and highly customized OS loading.

This architecture demonstrates significant advantages in small code size, easy customization, cross-architecture support and upstream alignment. Additionally, Cloud Firmware focuses on enhancing cloud scenario-specific features while stripping non-cloud legacy functions, effectively reducing technical debt and engineering maintenance costs.

These characteristics collectively shape an ideal BIOS solution that is highly customizable and has low total cost of ownership (TCO). The core objective of the Working Group is to promote Cloud Firmware as the preferred solution for next-generation BIOS.

Project Overview

To facilitate the promotion of Cloud Firmware to even broader industrial adoption, this project focuses on the aspects below:

• Documentation of key requirements.
• Fundamental architectural definitions.
• A collection of industrial practices in the form of open-source projects.
• Discussions of critical opens and road blockers.

Tech Discussion Topics

Boot Any OS from LinuxBoot

• Boot Windows
• Install UEFI Linux
• Reference: Planet Scale Deployment of LinuxBoot at Google — David Hu, Google, OSFC 2025 (talk, abstract, u-root universal payload); Cloud Firmware — Practice and Prospects — Guangyao Cao, Lenovo, APSARA Conference 2025 (PDF)

Tools

• Variable Config Tool
• In-Band BIOS Update Tool
• coreboot Tools — github.com/coreboot/coreboot/tree/main/util

Open Silicon Firmware Interface

• Open Silicon Firmware Interface (openSFI) Specification v0.3

OSF Builder

• github.com/linuxboot/osf-builder

Open Source Examples

coreboot

LinuxBoot

• defconfig — Intel Reference — linuxboot_defconfig

Community On-Going Work

coreboot

• Turin — GigaByte — MZ33-AR1 — review.coreboot.org (turin_poc)
• ARM64 — QEMU — LBBR coreboot PoC — github.com/opencomputeproject/OCP-OSF-LBBR_Coreboot_PoC
• RISCV64 — QEMU — ACPI and SMBIOS Support — review.coreboot.org (dev_bd)

FAQ: The License Model of Cloud Firmware

coreboot uses the GPL-2.0 licence^[1], where upstreaming is encouraged. GPL requires providing source code along with the product release. For CSP internal usage which doesn’t involve product release activity, maintaining coreboot code in an embargo way is legitimate. Usually, CSP coreboot code is divided into two parts — an upstreaming part as a base to maximally leverage the latest industrial development outputs, and a downstreaming part as a delta for its embargo features.

The Linux kernel uses GPL^[2] as well and follows the coreboot IP model. For cloud firmware usage, the upstream Linux kernel is adequate, so it can be treated as pure upstream with no embargo delta, except for a customized defconfig to tailor its image size for flash placement and to include the key drivers for the target boot media and boot processes.

u-root uses the BSD-3 Clause license^[3], which is fully compatible with being maintained in an embargo way.

[1] coreboot license · [2] Linux kernel license · [3] u-root license

References

• Scaling Sustainable Datacenters with Open Firmware: A Successful Ecosystem Collaboration across MiTAC, OSFF, ISVs, and Open Hardware Standards — Raj Kapoor (AMD), Christian Walter (9elements), Hancock Chang (MiTAC) — OCP Global Summit 2025 (slides)
• From Vendor-Specific to Vendor-Neutral: Advancing Silicon Firmware Abstraction with openSFI — Raj Kapoor (AMD), Allison Goodman (Intel), Albert Rennie (AMD) — OCP Global Summit 2025 (slides)
• Planet Scale Deployment of LinuxBoot at Google — David Hu (Google) — OSFC 2025 (talk, abstract)
• What CSP Servers Need from Open-Source Firmware Solutions — Jiming Sun (AWS) — OSFC 2024 (talk)
• Open System Firmware Project Update and Future Directions — Nill Ge (ByteDance), Dong Wei (ARM) — OCP Global Summit 2024 (slides)
• coreboot on OCP Systems — Ron Minnich — Open System Firmware Workstream, OCP Tech Talks 2022 (PDF)
• Speed Up Development and Ease Maintenance Through Open System Firmware — Christian Walter (9elements) — OCP Global Summit 2022 (slides)
• Cloud Firmware in ByteDance — Cong Wang, Nill Ge, Haitao Nie, Shuai Yuan (ByteDance) — OCP Global Summit 2021 (PDF)
• OSF on Intel Xeon Processor Based Servers from Blueprint to Production Quality — Anjaneya “Reddy” Chagam (Intel), Jonathan Zhang (Meta) — OCP Global Summit 2021 (PDF)
• June 22, 2026 (YouTube)