FYI, if anyone uses the latest SOF kernel branch (topic/sof-dev), there was a change in the location of the files used by the Linux kernel for Intel platforms:
firmware files are by default in /lib/firmware/intel/sof
topology files are in /lib/firmware/intel/sof-tplg.
You can override this by adding module arguments to go back to the previous setup.
modprobe sof-[pci|acpi]-dev fw_path=intel tplg_path=intel
This change was made so that firmware and topologies can be released separately, and allow a contributor company to release support for multiple platforms at the same time, with symlinks used for the directories instead of individual files. It'll also help distros or OEMs use non-default firmware locations for their own releases, if they included non-public components or change the firmware configurations.
Sorry for the inconvenience in the transition.
-Pierre