Intel® Boot Loader Development Kit

The Intel® Boot Loader Development Kit (Intel® BLDK) is a software toolkit that allows creation of customized and optimized initialization firmware solutions for embedded Intel® processor-based platforms. Intel BLDK enables rapid development of firmware for fixed-function embedded designs—those requiring basic initialization and functionality rather than the full capabilities delivered with a traditional BIOS.

The foundation of Intel BLDK is Intel’s latest implementation of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Specification; version 2.3 is the Intel® UEFI Development Kit 2010 (Intel® UDK2010). Consequently, Intel BLDK is fully compliant with the latest UEFI standards and is compatible for use with the Intel® UEFI Development Kit Debugger Tool and UEFI Shell Specification Version 2.0. Because Intel BLDK is based on open UEFI standards and the Intel UDK2010 implementation, a significant portion of the source code is openly available to provide flexibility for customizing the firmware initialization of code.

• Product brief: Intel® Boot Loader Development Kit
• Video: Reshaping the Intel® architecture firmware landscape using Intel® Boot Loader Development Kit (Intel® BLDK) 

Development kit components

• Rich code base: Based on the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, Intel BLDK provides a plethora of features and functionality required in embedded systems.
• Reference implementations: Example reference board images from Intel provide a baseline from which developers can customize their system firmware images.
• GUI tools: An integrated development environment facilitates easy navigation, modification, and debug of the underlying code base. Module selection and build tools allow custom image creation without direct code changes.
• Documentation: Comprehensive instructional documents enable self-sufficiency and effective support, no matter what the size of the project.

Benefits

• No cost or royalties: Intel BLDK helps reduce BOM costs.
• Reduced boot times: Customers can optimize firmware for reduced boot times and smaller firmware size.
• Rich feature set: Includes power management and the ability to boot to a variety of alternate devices.
• Greater flexibility: Allows developers full control to create and customize firmware initialization.
• Greater reusability: UEFI standards help create firmware solutions that can be widely reused.
• Rapid firmware development: Tools and development environment allow for rapid creation and customizing of reference firmware implementation.
• Ecosystem support: Members of the Intel® Intelligent Systems Alliance provide a wide array of value-added products, solutions, and services based on Intel BLDK.

Intel® System Studio

Intel® System Studio, a separate tool suite, provides a flexible solution to debug bootloaders developed with Intel BLDK as well as firmware and traditional BIOS. The Intel® JTAG Debugger (XDB) included with Intel System Studio allows full inspection and source level debug of EFI and UEFI data structures, all via an easy to use load command (EFI “loadthis”).