In my mind, firmware is the low-level software that's embedded in a device, and is both hard to change and unlikely to need to change, because it provides utility foundational to using your hardware. How do you turn that into a service?
Edit: apparently I can't read because it was right in there: "Firmware as a Service optimizes UEFI and other system firmware for timely quality patches that keep firmware up to date and enables efficient development of post-launch features." So basically, take the limitations I mentioned and get rid of them.
"As a service" in this context means the mental model / delivery pipeline is more like subscribing to a service than purchasing individual software. I'm sure this makes more sense to Microsoft folks; open-source folks are more likely to call it "continuous deployment" or "living at HEAD" or something. They compare it to Windows-as-a-service, the idea that you run the current version of Windows, not the version you paid for and future updates involve change control and procurement and other bureaucracy.
Firmware does change and often has security vulnerabilities, so you do need to be keeping it up to date the way you keep your OS up to date. Among other things, it includes processor microcode / errata fixes like some of the Spectre, Meltdown, etc. mitigations. It would be nice if we lived in a world where this doesn't need to change, but it does, and thankfully it is firmware and not hardware.
Hardware met Software on the road to Changtse. Software said: “You are yin and I am yang. If we travel together we will become famous and earn vast amounts of money.” And so they set forth together, thinking to conquer the world.
Presently they met Firmware, who was dressed in tattered rags and hobbled along propped on a thorny stick. Firmware said to them: “The Tao lies beyond yin and yang. It is silent and still as a pool of water.
It does not seek fame, therefore nobody knows its presence. It does not seek fortune, for it is complete within itself. It exists beyond space and time.”
Hardware and Software, ashamed, returned to their homes.
Per Wikipedia, it was coined in 1967 to refer to the glue code that existed at the boundary of hardware and software.
Or, in other words, any code which hooks directly to the hardware on one side and exposes abstractions (like an instruction set) that software can code against on the other.
I always assumed "firm" stuck, as in "You'll have a helluva time changing it, because it's the code that has to deal with all the complex electrical engineering stuff."
(E.g. processor errata, patched board mistakes via fuse or EEPROM, side effects of power supply undervolting or clock skew, or pre-initialized system murkiness)
It's integrated into recent distros, seamlessly shipping firmwares for supported vendors (Dell came first, HP arrived soon after, and I think I read Lenovo was being worked on) like this MS project does, or Apple has been doing for years.
They do, but Windows updates are much more opaque (IME). Seeing microcode being updated brought home how small the distance between hardware/firmware and software, which was OP's point.
Correct. If they push a little more it will just become part of the OS. Firmware should consist of minimal hardware init and a boot loader and nothing more.
BIOS firmware has been flashable from the OS since, what, the Windows 98 days? I'm sure I remember updating the BIOS on an old Pentium III ThinkPad in this manner.
> In my mind, firmware is the low-level software that's embedded in a device, and is both hard to change and unlikely to need to change
That may be a model suitable for a single machine. Once you get to hundreds, you get intimately familiar with how to update everything and how common firmware bugs are.
This sounds like a good thing overall, considering most OEMs can't even be bothered to update devices for Spectre that are older than 2 years.
However, I can't help but think that this is yet another thing on NSA/FBI's wishlist to Microsoft, just as most of the tracking stuff in Windows 10 seems to be. Say hello to "targeted malicious updates" by the U.S. government.
Yes, I know this was probably possible with the Windows updates already, but I imagine the malicious firmware will be much less likely to detect = the agencies can use this against many more people.
>"Firmware as a Service optimizes UEFI and other system firmware for timely quality patches that keep firmware up to date and enables efficient development of post-launch features."
sounds like an excuse to deliver unfinished software. remember that Microsoft got rid of its Windows testers and moved the burden of testing on the users.
In my mind, firmware is the low-level software that's embedded in a device, and is both hard to change and unlikely to need to change, because it provides utility foundational to using your hardware. How do you turn that into a service?
Edit: apparently I can't read because it was right in there: "Firmware as a Service optimizes UEFI and other system firmware for timely quality patches that keep firmware up to date and enables efficient development of post-launch features." So basically, take the limitations I mentioned and get rid of them.