Earlier this week, Microsoft announced its Component Firmware Update (CFU) system, its new open source project aimed at providing developers with updated firmware and controllers.
The CFU protocol is hosted in GitHub and is available to all developers who want to test and maintain Windows computers. Obviously, this protocol was created by Microsoft to ensure that firmware and driver updates do not interrupt the user. It is important to remember that on Windows, updates arrive through the Windows Update software delivery system, while the target component controls whether the update is applied or not.
The Microsoft Device Team is pleased to announce the release of an open source model for the Windows System Developer Component Firmware Update – Component Firmware Update (CFU). The factory software or component firmware must be updated in order to function properly. In this way, CFU guarantees that a component that is compatible will receive the firmware through the protocol and forward it to other components without downloading a tool to indicate that you need drivers.
We share the CFU protocol, the driver sample, the firmware sample code, and the tool sample. This is intended to enable system and peripheral developers to take advantage of this protocol, support its development, and easily and automatically distribute firmware updates to many of its firmware components.
Even though it is under development, there are clear goals for Redmond around this CFU, one of which we can mention is that the system provides updates without directly affecting or noticing the user.
The update must also be done via the Windows update drivers. You should also be able to wait until an update of the device is available. To name just a few, the rest of the requirements of this project you can follow this link. The implementation of this protocol can be translated into more speed and efficiency in finding or detecting that a component (driver or firmware) needs to be updated.
Although CFU is in the testing phase, the company has not ensured that this method will be adopted by all versions of Windows.