2025-04-03
In recent years, the rise of AI technology has accelerated the comprehensive transformation of infrastructure such as data centers.
However, compared with the hot products such as AI servers and AI chips, the BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) firmware may not be the star in the spotlight, but it plays an irreplaceable role in infrastructure evolution. Especially with the explosion of AI applications, the increasing scale of AI clusters, and the continuous increase in various devices in data centers, the BMC firmware of servers can be regarded as the "golden key" to the operation and maintenance management of large-scale diversified computing infrastructure.
As the key to the operation and maintenance management of large-scale computing infrastructure, the BMC firmware itself is also undergoing tremendous changes in the AI era. Open firmware, represented by OpenBMC, drives the BMC firmware technology towards openness and collaboration, breaking through the bottlenecks of traditional technologies in terms of industrial ecosystem, product technology and solutions, and exploring a win-win path for infrastructure operation and maintenance management.
Highlighted Bottlenecks of Traditional Technical Routes
With the evolution of computing infrastructure towards diversification and the trend of computing architectures shifting towards accelerator-centricity, the traditional technical routes of BMC firmware are experiencing significant bottlenecks.
The fundamental reason is that the driving forces of diverse business applications such as artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing have led to fundamental changes in computing infrastructure. The monitoring and management of infrastructure need to adapt to new demands in terms of architecture compatibility, platform adaptability, and flexible support for business scenarios. The explosion of AIGC has brought a series of new challenges to infrastructure such as data centers, marking an important juncture for accelerated changes in the BMC firmware.
Facing these changes, traditional BMC firmware technology is gradually becoming inadequate.
Firstly, it cannot meet the compatibility requirements for different processor platform architectures. The traditional BMC firmware features a coupled design with a closed architecture and poor scalability, making it difficult to adapt to diversified computing chips, diverse user needs and rapid changes in business scenarios.
Secondly, firmware development iterations are seriously mismatched with the rapid development of computing. The firmware iteration cycle of traditional IBV Codebase, which can last for six months to a year, is out of sync with the rapid iteration cycle of diversified heterogeneous computing chips in the AI era. Coupled with the inefficient processing capabilities of traditional firmware, this has severely constrained the rapid evolution of computing infrastructure.
Thirdly, the contradiction between closed ecosystem and rapidly changing innovation needs becomes prominent. Traditional BMC utilizes a closed source model and strict licensing agreements, which restrict users from distributing, modifying and customizing the firmware, making it difficult to meet the standardized, intelligent, and refined needs of data centers for infrastructure operation and maintenance management.
Traditional IBV is still mainly based on closed architectures, with code forwarding constrained by commercial considerations and requiring paid licensing. From the client’s perspective, some large domestic and foreign Internet companies and CSP manufacturers are accelerating the shift from traditional solutions to open solutions.
In fact, along with the general trend of open hardware in data centers, BMC firmware is also moving towards full openness as traditional technical bottlenecks become prominent. Open source projects represented by OpenBMC have laid a solid ecosystem and technical foundation for the development of the open firmware industry through a decade of effort.
Formation of Open Firmware Industry after A Decade of OpenBMC Effort
Openness and collaboration have become the most prominent demands in the BMC firmware field in recent years.
Today, open firmware has fostered a thriving industry ecosystem. Even traditional BMC technology solution providers are actively embracing open source projects and introducing open firmware scenarios. All this stems from the establishment of the OpenBMC open source projects in 2014, and the continuous promotion of upstream and downstream partners in the industry such as data center users, system manufacturers, and chip manufacturers.
Compared with traditional BMC firmware, OpenBMC has significant advantages in technical architecture and development mode. Through the highly scalable software framework and normalized interface, it achieves the compatibility and adaptation for diversified computing, improves the platform stability, and provides a unified platform for industrial joint innovation. 2024 can be considered the first year for the industrialization of open firmware. From the users to chip manufacturers, they are actively embracing open firmware solutions based on OpenBMC.
OpenBMC's successful leadership in the rapid development of the open firmware industry is firstly inseparable from the extensive participation of upstream and downstream partners in the industry over the past decade, forming a benign industrial ecosystem. From the official establishment of the OpenBMC project in 2014, to the subsequent participation of domestic and foreign Internet companies and CSP manufacturers, and then to the formal acceptance by the Linux Foundation in 2018, the OpenBMC project has spent a decade building a complete industrial ecosystem and an active technical community.
Currently, the OpenBMC community comprises 43 companies such as end users, processor manufacturers, system manufacturers, and IBV. The OpenBMC code contribution exceeded 250,000 lines annually from 2018 to September 2024, and the community continues to remain highly active. In the large-scale data centers of CSP customers, there are more than tens of thousands of deployed nodes.
Secondly, after a decade of refinement at the technical level, OpenBMC has steadily built an open software framework with clear hierarchy, easy scalability and strong stability. It is deeply integrated with the Linux open-source ecosystem, and widely compatible with multi-processor platforms and computing chips, supporting fast and flexible modular development and adaptation. The use of C++ object-oriented programming also greatly enriches function library resources and improves development efficiency.
What's more, OpenBMC follows the Apache 2.0 open source license, completely breaking the traditional closed development model of BMC in the past, encouraging the free use, modification and distribution of codes, and significantly enhancing the development efficiency and technological innovation vitality.
OpenBMC Software Architecture
Thirdly, OpenBMC has truly become a catalyst for technological innovation, successfully connecting the rapidly changing scenario needs of users with technological innovation, and making rapid response and efficient innovation feasible.
Compared with the products of some traditional IBV manufacturers, OpenBMC is at the forefront of industrial exploration in terms of the BMC integration with AI and accurate prediction, and has more advantages in functional innovation and performance.
For example, as LLM is adopted at various industries, AI clusters with tens of thousands of GPUs are becoming more common. However, as the scale of AI clusters continues to increase, a prominent challenge arises—interruption of numerous training tasks caused by memory failures, which seriously affects the training effect of LLM and AI application innovation. This challenge is and will be encountered by many users. However, relying solely on the iteration approach and development speed of traditional BMC technology is obviously difficult to meet the new demands in the market.
A long way to go for OpenBMC as the open firmware industry grows
Today, driven by the philosophy of open sharing and cutting-edge technical architecture, OpenBMC has reshaped the market structure for server management, broken the high entry barriers and proprietary technology barriers of the traditional BMC market, greatly enhanced the market innovation vitality, won wide recognition and active participation from upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and become the source and driving force of innovation for the open firmware industry, promoting the establishment and steady development of the open firmware industry.
However, for the open firmware industry to continue growing, OpenBMC still has a long way to go and needs to continue efforts in standardization, industrial expansion and ecosystem coordinated development, gradually forming a sustainable development model to truly meet a wider range of market demands.
The first is how to accelerate the standardization process and gradually solve the compatibility and interoperability issues. With the joining of more and more industry partners and users, OpenBMC's further deepening of standardization will undoubtedly be conducive to reducing the complexity of system integration and improving interoperability between different devices, thereby enhancing the operation and maintenance efficiency and stability of data centers.
For example, in recent years, the promulgation of a series of key standards such as Technical Requirements for Server Baseboard Management Controllers (BMC) and Test Methods for Server Baseboard Management Controllers (BMC) has laid a solid foundation for the standardized development of BMC firmware. In the future, with the implementation and improvement of more standardization initiatives, the standardization level of BMC open firmware is also expected to be continuously improved.
Secondly, after a decade of success in Internet companies and CSP manufacturers, OpenBMC now faces its next major challenge: how to achieve the extension and expansion of application scenarios into industries such as finance and telecommunication. As we all know, traditional industries such as finance and telecommunication have higher requirements for the stability and reliability of BMC firmware due to their different business needs, and will be more cautious about open source solutions such as OpenBMC. However, with the maturation of open firmware and the benchmark effect of the Internet, traditional industries such as finance will also actively embrace OpenBMC.
Thirdly, with the prosperity and development of the OpenBMC community and the increasing number of participants, version differentiation will occur, affecting the unity and compatibility of the system. The OpenBMC project needs to ensure the unity and directionality of the project while maintaining openness.
