AMD Preps Replacement of AGESA With openSIL Starting Next-Gen Zen 6 “Ryzen & EPYC” Families

AMD reveals plans to implement openSIL open-source firmware into next-gen Zen 6 Ryzen & EPYC CPUs for better transparency, security, & development.

AMD's openSIL project, announced in 2023 is now in good shape and looks to be on time for AMD's future processors. At the Open-Source Firmware Conference in Germany, the company revealed its progress on the openSIL project, indicating that the firmware will be ready for production within 2025-2026.

openSIL was open-sourced in June 2023 and is expected to completely take over AMD's AGESA in both client and server processors in the coming years. The progress of this project looks pretty much on time and as per the slides shared by AMD at OFSC 2024, the 6th gen AMD EPYC "Venice" and Ryzen processors based on the Zen 6 core architecture will have this firmware at the production level. Furthermore, AMD has plans for future programs as well, which will allow it to release openSIL code for newer platforms one quarter after the hardware is launched.

As per the information, AMD has already conducted an experimental port to one of its motherboards, and with the launch of Zen 6 processors, openSIL will be used along with AGESA-v10 firmware initially. The AGESA will be replaced eventually by openSIL completely shortly but the Zen 6 will still rely on the pre-x86 Platform Security Processor binaries.

It's expected that the AGESA will be phased out completely by the time Zen 7 CPUs arrive and AMD will strengthen its support for Coreboot, which is another open-source firmware project and will also make more contributions to Tianocore. With the transition to open-source firmware, the dependency on AMD's proprietary code will be reduced and with community involvement, openSIL firmware will allow community collaboration and contribution to developing the firmware for the better.

Not only this will enhance the overall transparency, innovations, and security for AMD's next-gen CPUs, but it could also lead to other hardware manufacturers adapting open-source firmware in the future. At the moment, AMD is active in the development of open-source solutions for various product lines that include Sound Open Firmware, secure Encrypted Virtualization firmware, and openBMC(Baseboard Management Controller software).

News Source: Phoronix