The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Forum’s members are some of the world’s foremost researchers in academia, eminent computer scientists, and technology leaders from more than 350 companies around the world. This blog will delve into many of the advantages of becoming a UEFI Forum member, from helping shape new market opportunities to meeting other innovators in the field, and many things in between.
The UEFI Forum champions firmware innovation through industry collaboration and the advocacy of a standardized interface that simplifies and secures platform initialization and firmware bootstrap operations. UEFI specifications benefit both the business and consumer end user. They bring new functionality and enhanced security to devices, firmware, and operating systems, and facilitate interoperability between platforms and systems. In addition, UEFI specifications allow for extensibility, modularity, and easy prototyping during development.
Work group opportunities
There are many ways to get involved in the activities of the Forum. For example, the eight work groups focus on areas such as security, testing, and communications. In these work groups, members help shape new market opportunities, present technical ideas to fellow UEFI members, demonstrate tangible industry leadership, and interact with a diverse set of peers. Members also access draft specifications and participate in shaping them as they are created.
Promotional benefits
Being part of the UEFI Forum gives members a way to publicly showcase their technical expertise. For example, the Forum promotes UEFI-centered presentations on the Forum website and via social media, and secures opportunities for whitepapers, press interviews, and podcasts for members. Participating in quarterly webinars is another way to benefit from the Forum’s industry connections. These webinars offer deep dives into pertinent subject matter for attendees, and they each include interactive Q&A sessions. These webinars are widely promoted throughout the industry prior to the event, and the member presenters are highlighted as content and technical experts. Recent webinars included How to Create a Secure Development Lifecycle for Firmware and The Role of Redfish in UEFI Forum Firmware Specifications.
Plugfests for education, testing, and networking
The UEFI Forum conducts Plugfests for members to learn, test for interoperability between products, and network with industry peers. Usually taking place twice a year, OS vendors, firmware vendors, OEM systems manufacturers, and add-in card manufacturers share presentations, history, future direction, and technical aspects on a variety of content. Included in the program are tech talks that detail and explain new firmware innovations and needs in the field. These talks can help new firmware developers immensely and are consistently one of the top draws at these events. In addition, it’s a chance to bring a product to exercise interoperability testing with various other member companies. Ensuring that a company’s product conforms to UEFI Specifications delivers a significant benefit in terms of end-user comparison to other products on the market. The networking opportunities found at UEFI Plugfests are a great chance to meet industry peers face-to-face and learn from them and get a feel for what’s happening around the ecosystem. The Forum also publicly promotes all the Plugfest presentation slides and videos on the website and via all of our communication channels.
Feedback from member companies
“We derive great value from our membership in the UEFI Forum. ASSET delivers JTAG-based debuggers for UEFI, and it’s important that our engineers keep up with the updated current standards and news in the industry. The UEFI Forum provides a venue for this. We also regularly attend the Plugfests, to connect our debuggers with various targets, and as a networking opportunity with other firmware professionals. This is a very important event for us.” – Alan Sguigna, Vice President, Sales & Customer Support, ASSET InterTech, Inc.
“As a Contributor, we have early access to the content. When we have a possible addition to the specification, we can go to the UEFI Specification Work Group with our proposal for review. After review and approval, it gets added to the spec. Also, Plugfest is an opportunity to meet and collaborate and it’s a venue where we can test our product in multiple different OEMs’ and IBVs’ platforms.” – Daniel Samuelraj, Principal Engineer, Broadcom Inc.
“The UEFI Forum is one of the best forums in the IT industry. Montage is very excited to join as a Contributor member, and we thank the Forum for its help with our firmware.” – Creatie Zhou, Partner Alliance Manager, Montage Technology Co., Ltd.
Dong Wei, Vice President of the UEFI Forum and Standards Architect Arm Fellow says, “UEFI Forum members are at the ‘ground level’ of one of the industry’s most crucial standards bodies. Arm has benefitted greatly from our membership, especially from the exchange of ideas among industry leaders at Plugfest twice a year. Furthermore, as a result of our participation in the UEFI forum, we have successfully enabled the Arm Community to establish a platform architecture for standard operating systems and hypervisors.”
Become a UEFI Forum member
In addition to the membership benefits above, additional membership benefits include access to the UEFI Forum ‘Members Only’ section of the website, invitations to member meetings and events, and access to all UEFI technical tools and design guides.
The UEFI Forum offers different membership levels for companies and individuals interested in membership, including a complimentary annual membership for individuals.
The UEFI Forum is a community that welcomes innovative ideas. By jointly discovering new firmware technologies, developing those into industry standards, and sharing knowledge and resources within the platform technologies community, the UEFI Forum continues to shape the future of personal and enterprise computing. We’d love to have you and/or your company as part of our member community. Please join now.