Simple Firmware Interface Explained

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 and . 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]

External links

Notes and References

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