Firmware Development: A Guide to Specialized Systemic Knowledge

Build your own system firmware. This book helps you understand system firmware architecture and minimalistic design, and provides a specialized knowledge of firmware development. The book includes guidance on understanding the system firmware build procedure, integrating pieces of firmware and allowing configuration, updating system firmware, creating a development infrastructure for allowing multi-party collaboration in firmware development, and gaining advanced system firmware debugging knowledge.

After reading the book you will be able to assume better control while developing your own firmware and know how to interact with native hardware while debugging. You will understand key principles for future firmware development using newer technology, and be ready for the introduction of modern safe programming languages for firmware development. Detailed system firmware development case studies using a futuristic approach cover:

• Future scalable system firmware development models
• Types of firmware development (system firmware, device firmware, manageability firmware)
• Tools and their usage while creating system firmware
• How to build infrastructure for seamless firmware development using a multi-party development model
• Debugging methodologies used during various phases of firmware product development
• Setting up key expectations for future firmware, including thinner firmware footprints and faster execution time, easier configuration, and increased transparent security

What You Will Learn

• Understand the system firmware working model of the future
• Gain knowledge to say goodbye to proprietary firmware for different types of firmware development
• Know the different types of tools required for creating firmware source code before flashing the final image into the boot device of the embedded system
• Develop skills to understand the failure in firmware or in the system and prepare the debugging environment to root cause the defects
• Discern the platform minimal security requirement
• Optimize the system firmware boot time based on the target hardware requirement
• Comprehend the product development cycle using open source firmware development

Who This Book Is For                                            

Embedded firmware and software engineers migrating the product development from closed source firmware to open source firmware for product adaptation needs as well as engineers working for open source firmware development. A secondary audience includes engineers working on various bootloaders such as open source firmware, UEFI, and Slim Bootloader development, as well as undergraduate and graduate students working on developing firmware skill sets.

Subrata Banik is a Firmware Engineer with twelve years of industry experience in system firmware design, development and debugging across various firmware architectures like EDK, coreboot, Slim bootloader etc. for x86 and ARM platforms. Subrata has experience working for all leading PC-makers. Subrata is an active member of open source firmware development across different projects like coreboot, oreboot, EDKII etc., where he is one of the top ten contributors in the open firmware (coreboot) community. Subrata has multiple US Patents approved and is very passionate about learning new technology and sharing knowledge among enthusiast engineers. Subrata has presented his technical talk at industry events such as Open Source Firmware conference, Institute for Security and Technology, Intel Developer Forum etc.

Vincent Zimmer is a Senior Principal Engineer in the Architecture, Graphics, and Software Group of the Intel corporation. He has been engaged in firmware development for over 25 years and leads the UEFI Security sub-team. Vincent has presented at industry events such as the Open Source Firmware Conference, Linux Fest Northwest, Intel Developer Forum, UEFI Plugfest, Open Compute Project Summit, BlackHat Las Vegas, BSides Seattle, Toorcon, and Cansecwest. In addition to collaborating on many white papers, Vincent has co-authored several books on firmware, papers, and over 400 issued US patents.