Advance firmware and IOMMU support

Ultraworked with [Sisyphus](https://github.com/code-yeongyu/oh-my-openagent)

Co-authored-by: Sisyphus <clio-agent@sisyphuslabs.ai>

local/recipes/system/firmware-loader/source/src/blob.rs

@@ -35,6 +35,14 @@ pub struct FirmwareRegistry {
 }
 
 impl FirmwareRegistry {
+    pub fn empty(base_dir: &Path) -> Self {
+        FirmwareRegistry {
+            base_dir: base_dir.to_path_buf(),
+            blobs: HashMap::new(),
+            cache: Arc::new(Mutex::new(HashMap::new())),
+        }
+    }
+
     pub fn new(base_dir: &Path) -> Result<Self, BlobError> {
         if !base_dir.exists() {
             return Err(BlobError::DirNotFound(base_dir.to_path_buf()));

local/recipes/system/firmware-loader/source/src/main.rs

@@ -116,10 +116,20 @@ fn main() {
         firmware_dir.display()
     );
 
-    let registry = FirmwareRegistry::new(&firmware_dir).unwrap_or_else(|e| {
-        error!("firmware-loader: fatal error: failed to initialize firmware registry: {e}");
-        process::exit(1);
-    });
+    let registry = match FirmwareRegistry::new(&firmware_dir) {
+        Ok(registry) => registry,
+        Err(blob::BlobError::DirNotFound(_)) => {
+            error!(
+                "firmware-loader: firmware directory not found, starting with an empty registry: {}",
+                firmware_dir.display()
+            );
+            FirmwareRegistry::empty(&firmware_dir)
+        }
+        Err(e) => {
+            error!("firmware-loader: fatal error: failed to initialize firmware registry: {e}");
+            process::exit(1);
+        }
+    };
 
     info!(
         "firmware-loader: indexed {} firmware blob(s) from {}",