LibreBMC A soft processor on an FPGA based solution for running the OpenBMC software stack

Baseboard Management Controllers (BMCs) sit at the heart of the boot and control infrastructure in the datacenter, so they require a unique functionality set.  Based on work to improve open source FPGA tooling, its now possible to replace traditional BMC ASICs with soft processors running on low cost FPGA hardware while still running the familiar OpenBMC software stack. To demonstrate this, the LibreBMC project was created and is being run under the OpenPOWER Foundation. Taking advantage of OCPs DC-SCM spec, Antmicro has created the first ever open source DC-SCM 1.0 modules with LibreBMC supported FPGAs. This allows drop in replacement on existing designs, fully verifiable hardware, and the unique opportunity to do software style deployment of new “hardware based security features (like memory tagging) even after hardware has been deployed in the datacenter!