Why Intel Wants BIOS Dead

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Posted by timothy on Friday September 17, 2004 @12:09PM from the because-bios-stole-its-harley dept.

An anonymous reader writes "This brief, readable whitepaper by Brian Richardson, a product manager at BIOS-vendor AMI, examines the history of BIOS firmware and explains why chipmaker Intel has invested much time and effort to create and promote a firmware framework to replace BIOS. Why would a chip company care about firmware? Read Richardson's paper about the 'Evolution of BIOS: EFI, the Framework, and beyond' to find out."

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For the lazy... by avalys · 2004-09-17 12:17 · Score: 5, Informative

For those too lazy to read the article, it basically says Intel wants to drop the current-generation BIOS because it requires backward-compatibility. For instance, when designing the Itanium, they didn't want to have to make their fancy-schmancy 64-bit processor emulate a 16-bit 8mhz CPU simply for the sake of the BIOS.

Note that, despite the hyperbolized title of the Slashdot summary, Intel doesn't want the BIOS dead. They don't have any problem with the concept of a BIOS, they just want the current firmware standard to evolve to better meet the needs of today's technology.

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1. Re:For the lazy... by FooAtWFU · 2004-09-17 12:25 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  they just want the current firmware standard to evolve to better meet the needs of today's technology.
  For values of "today's technology" equal to "Microsoft's latest DRM systems."
  
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  The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
2. Re:For the lazy... by IntlHarvester · 2004-09-17 19:06 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Don't let DRM cloud the issue -- the PC BIOS sucks phenomenally and should have been replaced decades ago. DRM is coming whether or not that happens.
  
  --
  Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
OpenFirmware by noselasd · 2004-09-17 12:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

Why can't all the PC architecture vendors just get along and use OpenFirmware like most other sane architectures ?
1. Re:OpenFirmware by AnwerB · 2004-09-17 13:01 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Why can't all the PC architecture vendors just get along and use OpenFirmware like most other sane architectures ?
  
  There is absolutely no market pressure whatsoever to do so.
  
  As long as there is either influence or money to be made on BIOS, and no pressure to move to an open standard, then none of big players will move in that direction.
  
  I realize that what I just said was obvious, but no one has said it yet (at the time of this writing).
2. Re:OpenFirmware by IntlHarvester · 2004-09-17 19:02 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The technical reasons are (A) backward-compatibility for older OSes and (B) easier migration path for newer OSes. And of course some NIH factor.
  
  OpenFirmware apparently has some fans because Apple and Sun use it. But OF is just a means to an end, and EFI accomplishes the same objectives. The best thing for Apple/Sun customers would be if they adopted EFI and became truely compatible with Intel hardware standards, fulfilling the promise made when they adopted PCI/AGP.
  
  --
  Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
3. Re:OpenFirmware by RalphBNumbers · 2004-09-18 03:27 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  I'd say OpenFirmware has fans because it's been doing most of what EFI promises to do 'real soon now' since the late '80s, and has been doing it as an IEEE standard for a decade.
  
  And of course, there's the fact that OpenFirmware is still the only firmware standard out there with it's own official theme song. Ha!
  
  --
  "The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
4. Re:OpenFirmware by IntlHarvester · 2004-09-18 05:12 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  You mean like Itanium? One of features of EFI is CPU-independant bytecode, like OF.
  
  --
  Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
5. Re:OpenFirmware by oxygene2k2 · 2004-09-18 09:26 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  OpenFirmware is standard of 300 pages.. EFI is 3000 pages, I think..
  
  also, intel claims that it took them "hundreds of man years" to do EFI, while it took a friend of mine and me (basically) the spare time of about 1.5 years to implement most of OF.
  
  see http://www.openbios.org/. (and yes, we're to busy to update the website)
It's DOS, not BIOS by LordNimon · 2004-09-17 12:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

I haven't read the article, but the reason for 8086 compatibility is for DOS, not BIOS. There's nothing preventing a vendor from producing a PC with a BIOS that doesn't support DOS. That will eliminate the 16-bit interfaces, all the real-mode crap, and tons of PCI code.
Vendors like Dell see the BIOS as a necessary evil. They pay BIOS developers big bucks to keep updating the BIOS for new motherboards. Occasionally, a new feature creeps in like USB keyboard or bootable CD support. To rip out all that legacy code (which no one has touched 15 years) would be a development and testing nightmare.
Of course, switching to Open Firmware would make more sense, but we'll never see that happen.

--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
1. Re:It's DOS, not BIOS by amorsen · 2004-09-17 18:45 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Back when SGI had their brief love affair with Microsoft, they produced workstations called VisualWS or something. They needed a custom copy of Windows NT, because they didn't have the usual real-mode boot or the DOS-mandated memory layout. This is from memory and I never actually touched one, so I could be wrong of course.
  
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  Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
2. Re:It's DOS, not BIOS by IntlHarvester · 2004-09-17 19:13 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Not just DOS! Removing BIOS would break Windows 98, Novell Netware, OS/2. It would also break bootcode in older versions of Linux/NT/BSD/etc. (And even if it was just DOS, may corps still use it to "Ghost" every new machine that comes in the door.)
  
  Believe or not, millions of customers still use this stuff. Killing back-compat would be a sales disaster. It's not like Apple where they can force customers to run OS x.y.z (released yesterday).
  
  On another level, there's the psychological factor. All the hardware vendors made their mark by being "100% IBM PC AT Compatible", and it's somewhat admirable they haven't given it up yet.
  
  --
  Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
3. Re:It's DOS, not BIOS by jrumney · 2004-09-17 22:52 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Removing BIOS would break Windows 98, Novell Netware, OS/2. It would also break bootcode in older versions of Linux/NT/BSD/etc.
  Who in their right minds is going to buy a new PC and put such an old OS on it? If you need old versions of OS's around for testing, then keep a few old PCs to run them on. There is no point in keeping 16bit boot support around for hysterical raisons.
4. Re:It's DOS, not BIOS by anti-NAT · 2004-09-17 23:45 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Who in their right minds is going to buy a new PC and put such an old OS on it?
  
  Corporates who need to upgrade to a new server for performance, yet can't afford to spend huge amounts of money upgrading the applications to suit the newer OSes.
  
  I'd be guessing you haven't worked in the large(ish) enterprise/corporate world. If you haven't, and haven't been exposed to custom applications, you probably aren't aware that hardware and the OSes to run the applications is a very, very minor cost when compared to the total costs of developing, deploying and supporting a custom application.
  
  The great advantage of the existing PC architecture has been the fact that if your applications weren't performing fast enough, you could just throw newer hardware at it. An over-the-weekend upgrade could result in dramatic performance increases. Compare that to having to port an application to a new architecture, test it, fix bugs, and if it the opportunity was taken to improve it at the time by changing the way it worked, running training courses for users and support staff, all of which may take six to twelve months or more.
  
  Continuing backward compatibility is probably the primary reason for the success of the PC architecture over the last twenty years.
  
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5. Re:It's DOS, not BIOS by Thing+1 · 2004-09-19 04:14 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Who in their right minds is going to buy a new PC and put such an old OS on it?
  
  We do it all the time at work. It's called Ghost. We don't have to install DOS, but we do have to be able to boot a DOS floppy. I guess there are Linux solutions available that'll boot from a CD or a floppy perhaps, but we standardized on Ghost...
  
  --
  I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Ugh. by bluephone · 2004-09-17 14:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yes, I RTFA, and Jesus H. Christ on a stick, that's a worthless article. I'm sending the site an email, I want those 5 minutes of my life back. As any high school geek could have said, the article boils down to the BIOS is still limited to Real Mode 8086 emulation, and thus everything until an OS kicks in is limited to this as well, as hopefully 80% of /.ers know. Then, it goes on to say EFI solves this. Not how, no technical details, aside from you can boot from USB devices (as you can with some modern BIOSs) without emulating a disk device.
Worthless article. I could have gotten that from the Intel EFI press releases put out FOUR YEARS AGO.

--
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
... or the wicked?.. by Fallen+Andy · 2004-09-17 20:37 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm puzzled. Yes you need to be able to emulate INT 10H but in real terms that's a *high* level interface. (may be a shock to virginal C++ programmers I guess). When I first started programming (and that was in the early 80's) most machines weren't anything like anyone elses machines. I was porting the UCSD p-system - a system based on an interpreted Pascal (Borland's Pascal up to 5.x is very similar). UCSD Pascal is best thought of as an early attempt at the Sun/Java "write once execute everywhere" philosophy. It didn't work out (sadly). But pre "PC's" no machine was even remotely similar to another machine. Developers couldn't target anything or earn enough. I always call this the "Pre-Cambrian explosion" because the machines and environments were so weird that only a drug fiend could have invented them. To cut a long story short - all the bios (sic) needs to do is load sector zero off the winchester (big grin for newbies) and let rip. Real programmers can cut their own debug code. (Now being a slower forty something I shudder when I think about it, but it was fun at the time). It would still be a good exercise to drop someone expecting an IDE into such an environment for evaluation. Never mind "bastard operator from hell", some of you gals/guys come up with "bastard sys programmer from hell".
1. Re:... or the wicked?.. by Fallen+Andy · 2004-09-17 21:53 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  ??? Son. I ported CP/M 68K (yuk isn't the word)
  When I was doing it :
  Mince (if you don't know Mark of the Unicorn's
  excellent EMACS clone then you would have killed
  for it when I was losing my sight in front of a
  TeleVideo TV925 (still working until 2000)
  
  Yeah. It is basic input output system. But that was
  too much for many developers (coughs and giggles).
  The "adaptable p-system" for the UCSD p-system
  made it even more simple. You still needed brains
  to do an SBIOS port - especially if the hardware
  was (as it was as a rule) flakey. I won't bore you
  with the details, but a very successful ISP in the
  North of England (who like me is a chemist) could
  relate tales which would make you curl up into
  the mandatory fetal position...).
  
  Wintel deserves to die. Believe me. I really don't
  want this low grade crud corrupting future generations of programmers. It doesn't work. Nothing will make it work. When we finally get to understand that the letter "A" is a given then I'll be able to write words. Or even sentences.
  I started my life as a scientist and I plan to die
  as one - even if I spent the middle bit masturbating in the software industry!
  
  Oh, and I was *hand* punching punch cards back in
  74 or maybe 73. One mistake and that syntax error
  on line 320 bit you three weeks later.
  
  I'm still learning about sucking eggs though...
  
  I know the /. moderators have no taste. But I have
  a good one (of course). So, Never give up hope- you'd be surpised what get's marked up as insightful.. (very big grin).
2. Re:... or the wicked?.. by Nutria · 2004-09-18 05:03 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  I programmed Basic Input Output System (BIOS) with the ancient BASIC of M$,
  
  Oh, puleeze. That's more bogus (boguser?) than a Dan Rather news report.
  
  Do you even know what BIOSs did on CP/M systems?
  
  18 years ago, in 1976.
  
  2004
  -1976
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  28
  
  --
  "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Boot quicker? by cbreaker · 2004-09-18 06:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

Text mode is higher resolution then 320x240. But if your BIOS shows some graphic during POST, it won't be any better even with a completely new BIOS type unless all the graphics card makers also agree upon a standard interface for high color, high resolution graphics on boot.

Most modern BIOS's boot very quickly. With a "normal" workstation setup with a single IDE hard disk and a CD-ROM drive, it often takes under three seconds before it starts to read the OS from the hard disk.

A new BIOS firmware won't help much in either of those cases. And if you have SCSI controllers and all that jazz, it will take just as long as before to detect all the drives.

I'm not saying that improving the BIOS isn't something that doesn't need to be done, but none of the features you mentioned will be improved.

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