Microsoft Announces Project Mu, an Open-Source Release of the UEFI Core

Mark Wilson writes: Microsoft has a new open source project -- Project Mu. This is the company's open-source release of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) core which is currently used by Surface devices and Hyper-V. With the project, Microsoft hopes to make it easier to build scalable and serviceable firmware, and it embraces the idea of Firmware as a Service (FaaS). This allows for fast and efficient updating of firmware after release, with both security patches and performance-enhancing updates.

FaaS is something that Microsoft has already enabled on Surface, but the company realized that TianoCore -- the existing open-source implementation of UEFI -- was not optimized for rapid servicing. This is where Project Mu can help, the company says. 'Mu is built around the idea that shipping and maintaining a UEFI product is an ongoing collaboration between numerous partners. For too long the industry has built products using a 'forking' model combined with copy/paste/rename and with each new product the maintenance burden grows to such a level that updates are near impossible due to cost and risk,' the company said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.