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Arm engineers are developing Live Firmware Activation (LFA) support for the Linux kernel, enabling firmware updates to be deployed without system reboots. The feature targets data centers and hyperscale environments where downtime is costly. LFA works by signaling an EL3 firmware agent via an SMC call, which handles the live update cooperatively with the target firmware component. The kernel driver detects LFA support, lists activatable firmware components by GUID, exposes attributes via sysfs under /sys/firmware/lfa/, and provides interfaces to trigger or cancel activations. Support is already merged in TF-A and TF-RMM. Integration with fwupd is also being considered.

Arm Preparing Live Firmware Activation Support For Linux