Intro To Intel's Next-Gen BIOS Architecture

An anonymous reader writes "This article introduces the Intel Platform Innovation Framework for the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), which is intended to provide an alternative to BIOS that will allow for faster booting, manageability, and additional features. According to the author, there has been rapid evolution of the personal computer platform since the 1980s. These advances have included order-of-magnitude increases in performance, ease-of-use, storage capacity, and connectivity. But there is one element of the PC that has not changed for the past 23 years -- namely, the BIOS (basic input/output system)."

Comments

Why is that bad?

[AKnightCowboy]

The awesome backward compatibility of the PC architecture is one of the main reasons it's the most popular personal computer platform. Besides, there have been tons of advances in BIOS technology over the past 20 years. Sure, the basics are still in there, but even 5 years ago you couldn't boot off a USB key fob or even over the network (PXE) on most motherboards. 10 years ago power management was basically non-existent and things like ACPI and APIC were years away. Extend, don't just throw it away. If you're going to get rid of it then at least adopt Openboot firmware like Macs and Suns have.

Re:Why is that bad?

[zulux]

If you're going to get rid of it then at least adopt Openboot firmware like Macs and Suns have.

The fun thing about Openboot is that it's in Forth:

On the Openboot prompt you can do this:

$ 42 69 + .

and it will spit out

$ 111

Re:Why is that bad?

[aster_ken]

OpenFirmware (defined in IEEE 1275 as updated in 1994) is no longer being maintained. It was withdrawn by the IEEE Standards Organization in, I belive, 1999. The rights to the document were sold to Global Engineering.

This does not mean that OpenFirmware is dead. On the contrary, there are several commercial implementations available. It does mean that it is no longer considered a "standard", though.

If you'd like some more information on OpenFirmware, you can visit the OpenBIOS web site.

progress?

[prof187]

According to the author, there has been rapid evolution of the personal computer platform since the 1980s

What?! When did this happen and why wasn't I told? Time to trade in the vacuum tubes

Re:progress?

[djdanlib]

You had vacuum tubes? Back in my day, we didn't have electricity. We had to use colored rocks, and those were hard to find because the world was in black and white, and sometimes one of us would get eaten by a mountain lion! And we were thankful!

Re:why?

[obeythefist]

EFI allows really big enhancements to the bootup procedures. Everything that happens from POST onwards in BIOS's today is a huge waste of time. (Especially on windows PCs, haha). All that time spend ennumarating ISA slots (what ISA slots?), floppy drives, hard drives, etc etc is a big time blowout.

One of the biggest steps in moving from that 1-2 minute bootup time on a PC is getting rid of the 10 or so seconds we spend letting the BIOS do its thing.

Why shouldn't you hit the "on" button and see the logon screen instantly? With more and more advances like EFI and solid state storage this might be closer than you think.

Surely this brings DRM to life

[rueger]

It strikes me that losing the hardware BIOS will almost certainly lead to some kind of DRM scheme - probably hardware related - that can't be bypassed by something like a boot floppy.

In fact, I really can't believe that DRM won't be built into whatever replaces the BIOS chip.

Course maybe I'm i'm just paranoid...

Re:Surely this brings DRM to life

[IntlHarvester]

You can do DRM in a conventional BIOS (see IBM systems now shipping)

You can have a DRM-free EFI implementation (see Itanium systems now shipping)

DRM and EFI aren't directly related at all -- although they will both become mainstream at about the same point in time.

Re:Mama told me only buy 100% IBM compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA -- it will emulate the PC BIOS (see figure 3).