AMD has been talking about going fully open-source with its firmware for a while, and now it’s finally happening. A Polish firm called 3mdeb is testing the new openSIL framework on the MSI B850-P Pro motherboard, the first time this upcoming firmware design has been tried on a consumer desktop board before Zen 6 officially arrives.
The current implementation is experimental. According to 3mdeb, it serves as a proof of concept and is not intended for production systems. However, it provides firmware developers with an early opportunity to understand how AMD’s next-generation silicon initialization layer operates before it replaces AGESA.
AMD designed openSIL to modernize the way its processors initialize hardware during boot, when key components such as the CPU, memory, and chipset are brought online. This initialization layer works alongside host firmware like UEFI or Coreboot. In the current test build, 3mdeb is developing within the Coreboot environment, using prior work from EPYC-based server platforms as a reference point.
The current result is a partial integration of openSIL with Coreboot on a consumer motherboard. While the board doesn’t yet appear on Coreboot’s official support list, enthusiasts are still able to test and experiment with the build.
The change from AGESA to openSIL goes beyond a typical firmware update. AGESA’s closed-source structure limited visibility into key parts of the platform, restricting external review and modification. As a result, security auditing and independent debugging were more difficult, areas that openSIL is intended to improve.
With the silicon initialization code now open source, AMD is basically letting developers look under the hood and help improve the firmware that powers up the hardware in the first place.
In addition to being open source, AMD has stated that openSIL is more modular and lightweight compared to AGESA. Unlike AGESA, which was closely integrated with UEFI, openSIL is intended to support multiple host firmware frameworks, increasing flexibility in environments such as Coreboot.
At this stage, most users have little practical reason to install the proof-of-concept release. Support for the MSI B850-P Pro is not yet complete, and firmware stability is still under testing. However, for developers and firmware researchers, it marks an important development.
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