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Comment by AceJohnny2 | Hacker News Reader

What is "Firmware as a Service" ?

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.

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"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.

I hate to admit that I just realized the hard -> firm -> soft ware analogy.

better late than never.

Cheers :)

Oh my god so did I

wow... I... I've been in IT for 25 years, a computer geek for 35, and... never even questioned it :O

OMG me too. Always thought it's because of "firm" as in a "company". Like, the software the company puts on the device and a user can't change. Haha.

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)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware#History

holy shit my life is a lie

mind blown

It keeps going

* hard -> firm -> soft -> wet ware

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_(brain)

Although this one is usually just referred to as the "user" ;)

Lets not forget vaporware.

Let's get some plasmaware to market!

And today I learned (TIL) too!

But only because you pointed it out in your comment, thanks.

Just wait until you encounter vaporware, and it's upcoming block chain variant: plasmaware

It's the newest thing, and it's going thermonuclear!

> Just wait until you encounter vaporware, and it's upcoming block chain variant: plasmaware

But then please introduce also the relevant variants of realtime (in analogy of hard, firm and soft realtime): vapor realtime and plasma realtime.

Oh, damn.

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.

— The Tao of Programming, Geoffrey James, 1987

That made my morning! Thank you for sharing.

You may also encounter "stiffware", which is software you'd like to update but can't.

So succinctly translating for FOSS folks: imagine if Coreboot/uBoot updates were integrated into the normal default package manager repositories.

Great analogy and great idea!

Not exactly coreboot/uBoot, but it already is:

https://fwupd.org/

https://github.com/hughsie/fwupd

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.

On a Surface device (and maybe some others?) you can get firmware (UEFI) updates via Windows Update.

When I switched from Windows to Linux, seeing security updates that included CPU microcode firmware was a bizarre experience.

Why is that? Windows Update also ship CPU microcode uodates since forever.

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.

And at the same time creating a side channel that can be interposed on so that malware can be loaded right into the flash on the mother board :-)

Seriously though, being "hard to change" on some parts of the system can be a feature.

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.

I remember when it used to require a jumper change so it couldn’t be triggered by malware. How I miss those days

Not to mention BIOS-destroying viruses from that era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH_(computer_virus)

> 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.

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