Secure non-volatile firmware memory configured within a baseboard management controller (bmc) system on a chip (soc)

Abstract

The technologies described herein provide a system having nonvolatile firmware memory that is configured on the same integrated circuit as a BMC SoC. This design provides the ability to store the system firmware within the SoC to minimize or eliminate the use of complex components or specialized silicon, while minimizing the number of attack points. The disclosed techniques also improve the performance of a system by eliminating the need for a system to perform a validation of contents stored on an external memory device for each boot. Further, the disclosed techniques can allow a storage device that is internal to the SoC to use a local bus of the SoC, and mitigate or eliminate the need for an SPI bus, which is much slower than the local bus of the BMC SoC.