Although Microsoft's Surface devices haven't reached millions of annual sales, the company still launches new products regularly. Recently, Microsoft released Surface Laptop - Smurface Edition and 50th Anniversary Edition Surface Laptop to celebrate the company's half century. Now, to further improve the overall quality of existing and future Surface devices, Microsoft is collaborating with external partners.
Microsoft has joined the Open Device Partnership (ODP), an initiative that aims to strengthen security and other critical elements by standardizing device software. One of ODP's key initiatives is promoting memory-safe programming languages like Rust - which has seen a huge surge in popularity in the industry recently. By standardizing firmware and system design, it helps to increase the device's ability to combat common security vulnerabilities and reduce overall engineering costs.
As part of the ODP initiative, Microsoft will invest in the following technology areas:
Patina: Rust-based, UEFI-compatible firmware, designed for memory safety, aiming to solve long-standing problems in the PC firmware ecosystem.
Secure Embedded Controller (EC) Firmware: Modern, security-focused embedded controller firmware focused on eliminating the types of vulnerabilities common in traditional EC code bases.
Unified operating system and embedded controller service interface: Ensure that operating systems on various devices can interact with embedded controllers in a consistent and standardized manner.
The joint initiative will bring many benefits to Surface partners and users, including greater security through Rust, quality consistency through firmware testing standardization, speed of innovation driven by a modular framework, increased supply chain transparency, and future-proofing through the flexible adoption of new hardware standards.
The investment by ODP and Microsoft is aimed at enabling the entire ecosystem to benefit from the benefits of firmware and hardware security and standardization.
To learn more about this open source initiative, you can visit its official website:
https://opendevicepartnership.org/