Systems and methods are disclosed for executing firmware in a computing device. A computing device comprises a controller comprising an interface and an interface state machine, non-volatile storage coupled to the interface state machine, the non-volatile storage storing initialization parameters, and a non-volatile memory module storing firmware for the device, the memory module coupled to the controller via the interface. The controller is configured to initialize the interface using the initialization parameters and the interface state machine, train the interface using the initialization parameters and the interface state machine, and execute the firmware from the non-volatile memory module.