BIOS/UEFI host firmware interfaces into OpenBMC (x86)

[Garrett, Mike (HPE Server Firmware)]

Hello all,



I'm interested in BIOS/UEFI host firmware interfaces into OpenBMC (x86) for POST-time data transfer.  I've been searching the email list archives and Discord for any discussion of this and haven't found much.



In the vendor-proprietary firmware world, the BMC firmware is often coupled closely with the vendor's host UEFI firmware using a non-standard but high-performance interface instead of the slow and primitive IPMI over KCS.  OpenBMC doesn't have natural BIOS partner, and as best I can tell, this means that POST time data transfer is least-common denominator KCS.  We could add the vendor specific support we need into our OpenBMC port to handle our UEFI firmware's POST-time data transfers, but would prefer to first understand if there's an emerging consensus on what replaces IPMI over KCS for x86.  This will become even more important when open source host firmware (CoreBoot or Min Platform or other) is running and all of the vendor specific ways of doing this disappear.  I'm interested in something standard (even de-facto) to transfer the big data items like SMBIOS and Remote BIOS Configuration data.



>From what I can tell from reading, the Open Power folks are going with PLDM over MCTP over some interface (KCS or BT?) to enable host firmware to BMC comms.  I am just curious if there is a consensus on a successor to IPMI/KCS for x86.  If there is a lode of rich info on this topic, can someone point me to it?  I'm interested in the community's thoughts.



Thanks,



Mike

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