Embodiments of the invention describe apparatuses, systems and methods for enabling memory device access prior to bus training, thereby enabling firmware image storage in non-flash nonvolatile memory, such as DDR DRAM. The increasing size of firmware images, such as BIOS, MRC, and ME firmware, makes current non-volatile storage solutions, such as SPI flash memory, impractical; executing BIOS code in flash is slow, and having a separate non-volatile memory device increases device costs. Furthermore, solutions such as Cache-as-RAM, which are utilized for running the pre-memory BIOS code, are limited by the cache size that is not scalable to the increasing complexity of BIOS code.Embodiments of the invention enable the use of persistent memory, such as DRAM, for BIOS code execution and data transfer by allowing DRAM access before memory channel training; said firmware images may then executed to “train” memory channels for subsequent system use.