HFI — Harmonic Firmware Initiative · QSOE Systems
What is it?
Harmonic Firmware Initiative (HFI) aims to<br>create, standardize, and maintain — for RISC-V systems — something the x86<br>world has taken for granted for forty years: a genuine power-on firmware<br>experience. You switch the machine on and it presents itself on its<br>own display — a firmware identity and POST screen, hardware enumeration, a<br>Set-Up configuration editor, and boot selection — the way every PC has since<br>the 1980s, and the way no bare RISC-V board does today.
HFI is that effort itself: the vision, the design decisions, and the<br>coordination. It defines the approach, standardizes the interface board makers<br>build to, maintains a reference implementation, and spreads the know-how. The<br>software it produces has its own name — HFI BIOS — and the<br>screen below is what that software draws.
RISC-VHFI RISC-V 64-bit System BIOS version 1.0<br>Copyright (c) 2026 QSOE Systems. All rights reserved.
Board: SiFive HiFive Unmatched (FU740)<br>Memory: 16384 MB OK<br>Detecting USB devices ........ OK<br>Scanning NVMe storage ........ done
Press DEL to run Set-Up
▶ Watch HFI BIOS boot the Unmatched<br>Read the white paper (PDF)
The software
HFI BIOS
The initiative's reference software is HFI BIOS , in full<br>HFI RISC-V 64-bit System BIOS. It is a firmware experience<br>layer built as an extension of U-Boot, not a replacement for it — it<br>reads the machine through U-Boot's own subsystems and draws it on the board's<br>own display.
Without a layer like this, a RISC-V board is in effect headless: switch it on<br>and the monitor stays dark while the firmware talks only down a serial cable to<br>a second computer. HFI BIOS gives it instead what a PC has always shown on<br>its own screen — a power-on identity and POST screen, boot-device and boot-order<br>menus, a Set-Up configuration editor in the idiom of a classic system BIOS, and<br>a system console underneath for the moments you want the prompt.
Isn't that what UEFI is for? In a sense, yes — UEFI, in its open<br>TianoCore (EDK II) form, offers a comparable Set-Up<br>screen and boot manager, and it is the road the x86 world took. But it is an<br>entire second firmware environment, large and heavy, and it does not sit<br>neatly inside the U-Boot that RISC-V boards already run. HFI BIOS takes<br>the opposite path: not a massive stack bolted alongside U-Boot, but a small<br>layer that extends the U-Boot already there.
Harmonization
The unified VideoBIOS interface
HFI BIOS drives each board's display through a single, unified interface —<br>the IBM PC's option-ROM idea, brought to RISC-V. On the PC that code lived in a<br>ROM chip on the graphics card; here it lives on the storage the board already<br>carries, on MMC or NVMe.
Port that interface once for a display controller, and every<br>board that uses it inherits the whole experience above — unchanged.
That is the harmonization the name points to: one interface, many boards, and<br>the same firmware experience carried forward to the next SoC.
Operating system · the boot target
HFI BIOS · POST · menus · Set-Up · console
Unified VideoBIOS interface · on MMC / NVMe — the contract
U-Boot · OpenSBI
Board silicon · CPU · PCIe · display controller · storage
Running today
The hardest case, first
The reference implementation runs on a SiFive HiFive Unmatched, driving its<br>display through a discrete NVIDIA GK-208 over PCIe — brought up natively inside<br>U-Boot, with no legacy VGA and no x86 assumptions. It is the hardest case on<br>purpose: if a scavenged Kepler card can present a coherent BIOS on RISC-V, a<br>board with an integrated display controller is the easy one.
HFI BIOS on a SiFive HiFive Unmatched — the actual power-on screen, photographed.
What HFI BIOS v1.0 puts on the screen today:
A power-on greeting — the VideoBIOS identity, the main<br>POST screen, the memory count, and USB / NVMe enumeration.
A configuration editor — the Set-Up screen, in the idiom<br>of the classic Award BIOS: standard and advanced settings, PC Health Status,<br>boot order, and flashing of the NOR firmware.
A system console — the U-Boot prompt underneath it all,<br>a keystroke away for when you want it.
The Set-Up editor — HFI BIOS's two-panel System Configuration Editor, in the classic BIOS idiom.
▶ Watch it happen:<br>HFI BIOS boots the Unmatched — POST, Set-Up,<br>and finally mr-bml on screen.
The invitation
An open initiative
HFI is offered as an initiative, not a product to license. Its reference<br>software is open by construction — HFI BIOS links U-Boot and carries<br>U-Boot's licence — and QSOE Systems stewards the whole: the interface<br>specification, a high-quality reference implementation, and the porting to new<br>controllers.
Board vendors are invited to adopt it, to co-develop the interface for their<br>own display controllers, and to be — for their platform — the first to ship a<br>board that greets its user like a finished computer. Harmonization is not a<br>standard handed down from above; it is a shared interface any vendor can build<br>to.
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