Oreboot = Coreboot without C. Oreboot is a fully open-source power-on-reset and romstage firmware written in Rust. By design, the firmware requires all support packages (such as memory init) to be open-source. Currently, Oreboot can boot an AST2500 ARM BMC to Linux with a u-bmc user-mode. Oreboot rethinks the firmware driver models. Each driver is distilled to four basic functions: init, pread, pwrite and shutdown. This interface allows us to make convenient higher-level drivers such as a "union driver" which duplicates a single write operation to multiple drivers. This makes consoles which have multiple underlying UART drivers elegant. By using the Rust programming language, Oreboot has a leg-up in terms of security and reliability compared to contemporary firmware written in C or assembly. Rust's borrow-checker ensures pointers are not used after being freed and proves that coroutines are thread-safe at compile time. In this talk, we will also present a short overview of the basics of Rust, how our driver model incorporates coroutines and the bootflow of Oreboot.
Speakers: ronald g. minnich Ryan O'Leary