Patent ID: 8688933

Claim:
A firmware modification system comprising: a nonvolatile memory containing an archive of one or more firmware components; a component abstraction store comprising information for locating the one or more firmware components stored in the archive; and a modification utility configured to modify a less-than-whole portion of the archive based on a modification request, comprising: copying the archive from the nonvolatile memory to a writeable memory; identifying a location of a firmware component in the archive to be modified based on information stored in the component abstraction store; determining whether a credential is present for the modification request; upon a determination that the credential is present for the modification request; modifying the firmware component in the copy of the archive in writeable memory to create a modified archive; and replacing the archive in the nonvolatile memory with the modified archive; in which the archive and a base firmware are stored in separate banks with each bank being independently programmable; the base firmware being employed to boot a computer system.