Trusted Firmware-A v2.4 released with Secure EL2 Hafnium SPM and much more!
Trusted Firmware-A has just completed the official v2.4 release which involves tagging of three main repositories: TF-A, TF-A-Tests and, for the first time ever, Hafnium as reference implementation of a Secure Partition Manager!
This is a major step towards defragmentation and standardization in the Secure Firmware space, by providing partners a reference solution for the Secure EL2 virtualization extension, compliant with the Arm Firmware Framework for Armv8-A specification.
Hafnium, which has joined Trusted Firmware.org earlier this year (read the full press release here), serves as Secure Partition Manager for the S-EL2 extension, enabling:
- Isolation through virtualization in the Secure world
- Deployment scenarios with coexistence of multiple mutually distrusting TEEs
- EL3, S-EL2 and Normal world protection from malicious or compromised software running in Secure Partitions in the Secure world
- EL3 and S-EL2 defragmentation and standardization, allowing partners to migrate their Secure software to lower Secure-ELs
The whole content of the release is described on the respective TF-A (1), TF-A-Tests (2) and Hafnium (3) change-logs, but here are some interesting highlights.
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Armv8.4 Secure EL2 extension:
- First ever release of Hafnium as reference SPM (Secure Partition Manager) firmware for S-EL2, supporting the FF-A v1.0 specification
- Feature implementation and testing of FF-A setup and discovery, direct messaging and memory sharing interfaces, multiple S-EL1 partitions support
- Bare minimum implementation for S-EL1 partitions provided in TF-A-tests repository (Cactus)
- Support for booting OP-TEE as a guest S-EL1 Secure Partition on top of Hafnium in S-EL2
- Complete SPM documentation can be found here
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Armv8.6 features support:
- Enhanced Counter Virtualization (ECV)
- Fine Grained Traps (FGT)
- WFE trap delays
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Reference implementation of Firmware Measured Boot on Arm along with support for a fTPM test service
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Support for dual-root Chain of Trust for Secure Partitions
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Dynamic SDEI configuration
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Numerous CPUs Errata including but not limited to Speculative AT Errata workarounds for Cortex-A53
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Chain of Trust in device tree: moved the Chain of Trust in a more human-readable format
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SMC Fuzzer module in TF-A-Tests
New Arm cores and Arm/Partners platforms support:
- Arm Morello
- Arm Total Compute TC0: See also the TC0 documentation for the initial support of Secure EL2 on the first Armv8.4 enabled platform (based on TF-A-v2.4-rc0)
- iEi PUZZLE-M801
- Marvell OCTEON TX2 T9130
- MediaTek MT8192
- NXP i.MX 8M Nano & Plus
- QTI CHIP SC7180
- STM32MP151F, STM32MP153F, STM32MP157F, STM32MP151D, STM32MP153D, STM32MP157D
