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If you have been doing BIOS work or read a book about it, you probably have an idea about what firmware is doing for a PC. Firmware needs to do the following:

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Since 1999, developers from around the world, some as individual contributors and others working on behalf of businesses and corporations, have formed a community around coreboot, an open source firmware project. is boot firmware primarily focused on x86 processors and chipsets, but other processors, like Alpha, PPC, and ARM-based systems are supported. The coreboot logo is a European Brown Hare, Figure 4-1.

When the first version of Chrome OS became available, many people were asking the same questions:Why?What can it be used for? How is it different from Android? Out of curiosity, many people downloaded it and played with an earlier version. People quickly discovered that it is a neat idea to build an application environment for connected devices that is bounded by a browser-like framework.

This chapter will provide a bridge from the earlier chapters on FSP and coreboot to Unified Extensible Interface (UEFI)-based technologies. These UEFI technologies include the UEFI Platform Initialization (PI) –based modules in the EFI Developer Kit II (EDKII) found on tianocore.org.EDK II elements can “consume” an Intel FSP binary to build a complete platform. In addition, EDK II can be used as a payload for coreboot-style systems. Finally, there are examples of EDK II–based open hardware platforms, such as Minnow and MinnowMax, which demonstrate the Intel FSP and EDK II platform elements.

The Intel Quark SoC X1000 is Intel’s lowest-power SoC, designed to provide performance and reduce development costs for securely managed Internet of Things endpoint devices.It is initially offered as a single-core, single-threaded microprocessor, making it an ideal solution for low-cost, small form factor, fanless and headless designs.

Embedded firmware has a lot of facets beyond the topics we could cover in this book. Our goals have been to provide enough knowledge and tools to get you started quickly when you deal with an embedded design based on Intel Architecture. The contents in this book may not have anticipated all the changes in the specifications and APIs that were under development when we were writing this book, but the framework of the book can represent the essence of the ideas and examples shown in the book. Regardless of whether you have read all the chapters in this book, you should have learned about the key ingredients mentioned in it: Intel FSP, coreboot, EDK II, Chromebook firmware, and the unique firmware features that embedded industries are looking for.

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