Simple Firmware Interface

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SFI Common Table Format
Offset	Length	Field
0	4	Signature
4	4	Length
8	1	Revision
9	1	Checksum
10	6	OEM ID
16	8	OEM Table ID
24	var.	Table Payload

Simple Firmware Interface (SFI) is developed by Intel Corporation as a lightweight method for firmware to export static tables to the operating system. It is supported by Intel's hand-held Moorestown platform.

SFI tables are data structures in memory, and all SFI tables share a common table header format. The operating system finds the system table by searching 16 byte boundaries between physical address 0x000E0000 and 0x000FFFFF. SFI has CPU, APIC, Memory Map, Idle, Frequency, M-Timer, M-RTC, OEMx, Wake Vector, I²C Device, and a SPI Device table.

SFI provides access to a standard ACPI XSDT (Extended System Description Table). XSDT is used by SFI to prevent namespace collision between SPI and ACPI. It can access standard ACPI tables such as PCI Memory Configuration Table (MCFG).

SFI support was merged into Linux kernel 2.6.32-rc1;^[1] the core SFI patch is about 1,000 lines of code. Linux is the first operating system with an SFI implementation. Linux kernel 5.6 marked SFI as obsolete.^[2]

SFI support was removed in Linux kernel 5.12.^[3]

References

^ "Upstream Linux Kernel Support". June 2009.
^ "The Linux Kernel Obsoletes The Intel Simple Firmware Interface - Phoronix". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 2020-09-16.
^ Wysocki, Rafael. "Linux-Kernel Archive: [GIT PULL] Simple Firmware Interface (SFI) support removal for v5.12-rc1". lkml.iu.edu. LKML. Retrieved 26 February 2021.

External links

Brown, Len; Kamp, Kerry Vander (2010-10-19). "Simple Firmware Interface - Draft 0.8.2" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04.
Brown, A. Leonard (2009). "The Simple Firmware Interface" (PDF). Ottawa Linux Symposium 2009.

Firmware and booting

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Booting firmware

Types	Proprietary firmware Open-source firmware Custom firmware
Interfaces	UEFI BIOS Video BIOS Open Firmware ACPI MultiProcessor Specification APM Legacy Plug and Play AlphaBIOS SRM SFI
Implementations	SeaBIOS Award BIOS American Megatrends AMIBIOS AMI Aptio InsydeH2O Phoenix SecureCore UEFI TianoCore EDK II OpenBIOS Coreboot Libreboot LinuxBoot Kickstart Run-Time Abstraction Services

Hybrid firmware bootloader

Bootloaders

Implementations	Acronis OS Selector Barebox BootManager BootX (Apple) BootX (Linux) GNU GRUB iBoot systemd-boot loadlin NTLDR OpeniBoot RedBoot rEFInd rEFIt SYSLINUX Windows Boot Manager xOSL Yaboot Plop Boot Manager MILO

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Software	flashrom fwupd UEFITool Odin Heimdall
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IA-32 (32-bit x86)	P5 P6 P6 variant (Pentium M) P6 variant (Enhanced Pentium M) NetBurst
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Current products

x86-64 (64-bit)	Atom Celeron Pentium Core 10th gen 11th gen 12th gen 13th gen 14th gen Xeon

Discontinued

BCD oriented (4-bit)	4004 (1971) 4040 (1974)
pre-x86 (8-bit)	8008 (1972) 8080 (1974) 8085 (1977)
Early x86 (16-bit)	8086 (1978) 8088 (1979) 80186 (1982) 80188 (1982) 80286 (1982)
x87 (external FPUs)	8/16-bit databus 8087 (1980) 16-bit databus 80C187 80287 80387SX 32-bit databus 80387DX 80487
IA-32 (32-bit x86)	i386 SX 376 EX i486 SX DX2 DX4 SL RapidCAD OverDrive A100/A110 Atom CE SoC Celeron (1998) M D (2004) Pentium Original i586 OverDrive Pro II III 4 M Dual-Core Core Xeon P6-based NetBurst-based Core-based Quark Tolapai
x86-64 (64-bit)	Atom SoC CE Celeron D Dual-Core Pentium 4 D Extreme Edition Dual-Core Core 2 1st gen 2nd gen 3rd gen 4th gen 5th gen 6th gen 7th gen 8th gen 9th gen 10th gen 11th gen M Xeon Nehalem-based Sandy Bridge-based Ivy Bridge-based Haswell-based Broadwell-based Skylake-based
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