| Developer: | Intel |
| Engines: | --> |
| License: | BSD-2-Clause-Patent |
TianoCore EDK II (formerly Tiano) is the reference implementation of UEFI by Intel. EDK is the abbreviation for EFI Development Kit and is developed by the TianoCore community.[1] TianoCore EDK II is the de facto standard generic UEFI services implementation.[2]
In 2004, Intel released their "Foundation Code" of their EFI implementation using a free license. The resulting code formed the basis of the community-run EDK project on SourceForge, started in 2004. The name "Tiano" was present in the initial Intel code.[3] The last update to the EDK (version 1) project happened in May 2010.[4] Version 2 is in active development.[5]
An "edk2" project was imported into SourceForge in April 2006, with a package-oriented code base again written by Intel. The initial "DeveloperManual" referred to this project as "Tiano R9".[6] In 2008, a stable, validated version of EDK II was tagged as "UEFI Development Kit 2008" (UDK2008). The tag includes a BuildNotes.txt dating to November 2006 describing the code found in the initial import, and a BuildNotes2.txt describing modules added in May 2008.[7] UDK2010 was the first version of EDK II to be widely known.[8] Intel would continue to validate certain snapshots of EDK II as UDK until 2018, when EDK II moved into a "stable tag" format.[9]
Although EDK II implements the UEFI specification, it is not endorsed by the UEFI Forum.
EDK II code has been integrated into other projects.
A part of TianoCore is the UEFI shell. When a specific UEFI vendor does not provide a UEFI shell, the one from TianoCore can be used.[10]
Google uses a version of coreboot modified to launch Tiano. This feature is called PIANO (payload into Tiano) or tianocoreboot. PIANO code was merged into coreboot in 2013.[11] The code was updated to be compatible with EDK II in 2017.[12]
EDK2 source code includes instructions for building as a payload for coreboot or Intel's "slim bootloader".[13]
Project Mu is a fork of EDK-II by Microsoft.[14] [15] It is an open source release of the UEFI core used in Microsoft Surface and Hyper-V products initiated by Microsoft in December 2018.[16] The project promotes the idea of Firmware as a Service.[17] The project was started to replace TianoCore's edk2 implementation to improve quality tests of the competing open source UEFI core.[18]
EFIDroid is a bootloader for Android devices based on Snapdragon processors that is based on EDK-II.[19]
In December 2023 a vulnerability termed "LogoFAIL" was discovered associated with EDK II which enabled an attacker to insert their own code in place of custom boot logo bitmap loader modules.[20]