UEFI Formed to Replace BIOS

anonymous cow-herd writes "Businesswire reports that several leading technology companies including Intel, AMD, Microsoft, IBM, Dell and HP and others have formed the Unified EFI Forum. The non-profit corporation will assume responsibility for the development and promotion of the EFI specification, a pre-boot interface originally developed by Intel that is intended to replace the aging PC BIOS."

Comments

Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[AKAImBatman]

I've said before, and I'll say it again: Why not OpenFirmware/OpenBoot?

Let's go through the list and see what EFI has compared to OpenFirmware, shall we?

1. EFI has a built-in bootloader. (Check)
2. EFI has built-in device drivers. (Check)
3. EFI has a shell environment. (Check, except that OpenFirmware isn't so laughable.)
4. EFI is cross platform. (Check)
5. EFI maintain *some* of the old PC BIOS calls. (No Support in OpenFirmware. Boo hoo.)
6. EFI adds trusted computing. (No Support in OpenFirmware. OF believes in computers being controlled by their owners.)

So why EFI and not OpenFirmware? Could it be a Not Invented Here Syndrome, or something more sinister? Is this the beginning of Trusted Computing for all? How do they expect to get customers to purchase an EFI system when a PC BIOS one is still well supported? Will they try to make an exclusive contract with Dell and invite the wrath of the justice department?

Only time will tell.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ckaminski]

Have to admit that #2 is the prime reason I want new bootware. Dammit, the whole software IDE raid thing has me pissed. Why do I need drivers (except for software management) for RAID that pretends to be ATAPI? Either implement it as a real ATAPI translation layer, so I don't need drivers, or don't call it "IDE" raid. jeebus.

If USB could figure out driverless storage, I'm sure the rest of the industry can. How many different ways of defining storage can there be?

Networking too. I'm sick of device drivers. Sick I tell you! And not just because I run Linux. I've got an IBM T41 laptop, and trying to figure out which of 18 Windows ethernet/wifi configurations the thing came configured with is pissing me off.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Total_Wimp]

... or why not have the fine folks who support OpenFirmware join the EFI group and work with them to make a standard that meets everyone's needs? I sure hope they don't have a "Not Invented Here" mentality that will stop them from working to create a real industry standard with a real industry group.

Leaders of OF should send EFI a letter. The worst they can say is "you're not welcome." But then everything will be right out in the open, won't it?

TW

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[oringo]

Well I didn't read the spec of EFI, but I took a look at openfirmware's website, and the first thing that I read was openfirmware is IEEE1275 standard, but is WITHDRAWN by IEEE. Could that be the reason of EFI, or the result? Another possible explanation is that microsoft wants more control of this, and they know they can get it because no standards like this can fly without them.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[garcia]

Is this the beginning of Trusted Computing for all? How do they expect to get customers to purchase an EFI system when a PC BIOS one is still well supported?

1) New Microsoft products will not boot on machines not installed with a DRM'd loader.

2) The "regular" Internet will not work with those people that aren't using trusted computing (i.e. online banking, music stores, etc).

3) People are buying new computers instead of cleaning off spyware because it's more cost effective.

4) Microsoft is now creating "anti-spyware" software (*cough* the recent Claria reports *cough*) so that people may end up going down the road listed in #3.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Enigma_Man]

Your average customer hasn't ever even HEARD of a BIOS, so they don't know WTF it is. They just hear "three point too giga flops prints faster, faster internet, faster faster" from the sales droids. They don't care if it's Intel, AMD, Dell, Gateway, or a steaming pile of poo in a box, as long as they hear big numbers at the shop where they buy it. They don't know, don't care. Then when 90% of all "computer-users" have bought these trusted-computing Longhorn-lockdowns, there won't be any choices, even if everybody does realize "hey, I can't watch these pirated movies anymore" they'll be complacent sheep, because that's what they always do: look at viruses, spyware, etc. People don't know enough to be able to care.

-Jesse

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[oxygene2k2]

well, OF exists for 1994 - so intel should have joined the OF effort (IEEE standard, even)

they didn't.. and defined a standard 10 times larger than OF, doing approximately the same

if we (the OF people) join them, the best that could happen is a combined standard 11 times larger than OF - not wise.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[oxygene2k2]

IEEE1275-1994 is withdrawn because no-one cared to pay money for someone at IEEE to rubber stamp a changed year number (so it could become IEEE1275-1999 and then -2004).

it's still in active use on every PPC device and every SPARC device, necessary extensions (new busses etc) are handled via supplementals.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[DenDave]

Without a doubt it is a Not Invented Here Syndrome, in addition to a "we don't own the patent" disorder.

OpenFirmware is clearly a better alternative but it reeks of IBM and that scares most of the companies mentioned..

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[LurkerXXX]

So instead you will keep from joining their group the only folks who would be opposed to trusted computing?

They didn't join your group. Get over it. Staying pure in your group might make you feel good, but it's the group made of major manufacturers who will decide what's actually produced and out there for consumers to use. Not trying to join up with them and make the voice of reason present within that grou might be much much more unwise.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[oxygene2k2]

OpenFirmware is SUNs brainchild, IBM (and Apple) adopted it in the powerpc development process

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[jonadab]

> They just hear "three point too giga flops prints faster, faster
> internet, faster faster" from the sales droids.

I hate to break it to you, but it's not 1990 anymore, and the word "faster" no longer sells hardware except in server space (which is clearly not the market you're talking about), to a relative handful of gamers and powerusers, and to the extreme low-end of the knowledge curve (where the difference between terms such as "computer" and "internet" is still unclear and problems with NetZero can get blamed on the computer's memory, or possibly the monitor).

For the mainstream ordinary everyday end user (the kind of person who either knows how to copy and paste, or is aware that it is something they probably should learn how to do at some point) there are three possible reasons to buy a new computer at this point:
1. The old one is broken. This is probably the most common of the three.
2. The old one doesn't support new features that are wanted, such as
burning DVDs. PowerUsers will add components or install new software,
but end users in some cases will replace the system instead, especially
if the upgrade process might otherwise require a screwdriver.
3. The money is burning a hole in the wallet.

The third option also covers reasons that aren't any kind of reason at all, such as, "It looked cool on the store shelf" or "My cousin has that brand and really likes it".

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Sique]

On the other hand, when everything actually running on the Trusted Plattform is going to cost money, and there is no free (as in beer) contend available (because of the licensing costs and requirements to get a Trusted Platform certificate), how interesting will it be to everyone? How often will they upgrade?
How many people have an Xbox or PS2 or GameCube or , and don't want an additional all purpose computer because the system they own completely satisfieds their needs?
It all boils down to the question: If we cut down on the number of providers (and DRM just cuts down the number of entities which offer something for you, being it legal or not), how long does it take until the system is no longer able to cope with demand (not necessarily in numbers, but in features, possibilities, additions)?
The IBM compatible PC was successful not necessarily because of the offerings of IBM and Microsoft, but because of the ease to create derivates and additional tools. PkZip and SideStep, Norton Utilities and all the hundreds of thousands little share- and freeware helper made it the versatile platform it is today. Introducing the trusted platform just cuts the roots to this flowering. How long will it grow if the soil gets thinner?
I give the Trusted Platform about 10 years, then something will grow up in parallel and replace the Trusted Platform step by step. It will be a sheer necessity, because the platform is moving too slow for the demand, laws and industry standards be damned.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Mac Degger]

"Not Invented Here"-mentality?

Jesus...are you guys all this naive? Look at the first-poster's post and see the last item. The reason the mayor manufacturors want EFI over anything else is of course Trusted Computing. Anyone who thinks otherwise (especially considering OF has 11 years of getting the bugs out) is hopelessly naive.

And it's sad, not just because with DRM/TC that 'great firewall of China' can be implemented anywhere quite trivially and in a targetted way, or just because the little group with it's (admittedly better) OF doesn't have jack shit influence-wise, or just because if it did join EFI (even if EFI let it) it would be drowned out, but most of all because the first couple of posts at /. come out with some bogus 'well, maybe it's because of a NIH-mentality!'. Yeah; right.

I'm sorry this post is so vitriolic, but the fact is that here it is: DRM made for mass consumption. Only the geeks will know not to buy it, but it won't matter, because soon you won't be able to buy anything without a TC-EFI 'bios'. Or at least something up-to-date. For proof, just try and get a decent PCI(non-e) graphics card, and just look at what's happening to AGP.
And for the people who say 'it'll be hacked'....yeah, it will, but it won't do us much good; look at all the guys with chipped xbox's who don't do it for the pirated games, but for the otherwise never playable Japanese imports. Yeah, they can crack it, but they can't play 'Live'.

So I'm a bit bitter about this: if we can't get enough people to talk with their wallets, we will soon truly have two internets: one for the masses, all EFI'd and bright-shiny-new, and one for the geeks who run ten year old hardware, because that's the last pieces which rolled off without EFI.

And for those who hope for capitalism and market forces to right this: forget it. PC-electronics is only feasable due to high mass-market penentration: geeks alone are too small a market for manufacturors to cost-effectively make EFI-less products when that's the standard. And even if they do manage (at largely inflated prices, too high for the average geek), you won't be able to use it on the EFI'd internet2.0.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Lepaca Kliffoth]

I don't see any difference between mindless consumers who read slashdot and mindless consumers who don't...

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Shaper_pmp]

This, unfortunately, is exactly right.

The problem is that now PCs are poised to explode into the home entertainment market as a general-purpose device, the overwhelming majority of the market is going to be Joe Sixpack, who's quite happy to buy DRM-encrusted shit because he doens't know any better.

For most of the history of the PC, people who've been buying PCs (or at least advising those who do) have been the more technically literate, so things like DRM would have a hard time gaining headspace.

With the PC's move from "expensive equipment" to "commodity entertainment device" the majority of the new buyers are much less technical than previously, so manufacturers can at last freely lobotomise their products for Big Business interests, and still be assured there's a huge market (in fact, the majority of the market) who'll be willing to buy them.

So, Joe Sixpack can't watch pirate movies (like he once vaguely heard of people doing), and can't back up his DVDs, but then he never could, so by his perceptions he doesn't really "lose" anything.

As for us hackers, techies, geeks and nerds, well, we're just going to have to get used to forswearing all mainstream-culture media, or living with an ass-full of MPAA/RIAA cock every time we turn on our machines.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Pxtl]

Am I the only one who reads UEFI and thinks of UFIA? Then again, maybe the similarity of acronyms isn't coincidental.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[moonbender]

I think there's still some hope left for market forces. Sure, geeks aren't large enough a market. But people who want to play their "pirated" movies and music are a fairly large market - just look at the mp3 player boom - and chances are some manufacturers will cater to them. Most DVD players you can buy these days, especially those sold at Wal-Mart et al, are capable of playing back DivX. And as far as I know it's not difficult at all to find a DVD player that is either region-less out of the box or trivially easy to modify that way.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ThePhilips]

IMNSHO, OpenFirmware is way too open.

PC industry is filled with crippled hardware. Only if people knew the quality of what they buy...

It is quite showing that OF is adopted only by Sun & Apple: both well know for quality harware with good record. Companies not afraid to respond to customers claims. And frequently responding.

Additionally, from rumors I have heard, EFI is designed madularly, and modules basicly can be any kind of binary blobs. So EFI will improve nothing on side of BIOS - it will remain closed source, and will quite quickly end-up being fix for every hole system might potentially have. Just like BIOS.

After all, all those magic stuff they promise, can be as easily implemented on top of modern BIOS. There is no technical problems as it is. *NO* *TECHNICAL* *PROBLEMS*. Many companies have source code for BIOS. Just sit down and do it. Just like IBM did with Slimline Open Firmware - stripped down version of OF, sufficient to boot Linux on JS20 blades.
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/librar y/pa-dw-slof.html

P.S. From what I have heard about BIOS developement, it is low amount of flash which is problem: normally installed on PCs is only 64k. That's the problem - not BIOS itself. EFI I'm sure will mandate something like 1MB minimum of flash - after all the prices are now so much lower. But still as it stands: there is no un-solvable problem with BIOS.

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[Total_Wimp]

First off, the reason I used the term "Not Invented Here" was because that was the term the original post used. I'm not bashing Open Firmware.

Second off, 'Trusted Computing' can, and likely, will coexist with I-have-control-of-my-own-box computing. The question is, how will that coexistance work?

1. Is it gonna work by the Linux community needing to buy seperate motherboards with seperate firmware and seperate CPUs.

2. Is it gonna work by the Linux community hacking the firmware in ways that aren't technically legal (think Xbox) so the business community won't have anything to do with it.

3. Or is it gonna work by having firmware where 'Trusted Computing' can be turned off and on (or forced off and on) depending on the OS you choose to run?

If the F/OSS doesn't work with major industry groups, you're going to get #1 or #2 and F/OSS operating systems will be marginalized or worse. If they work with the industry groups you'll at least get a shot at #3.

There is a good second reason though. If F/OSS wants to be part of the computing community then they're going to have to come out of their F/OSS burrows occasionally and join industry groups to create industry standards. Yes, it's hard. Yes, lots of these groups don't work. Yes, some of these companies are evil, or mean, or monopolistic. So what?

There's a term for people who don't join in the decision making process and then complain about it afterwords when the decisions go against them. Actually there are several terms, but the one I want to use today is "childish". It's time for F/OSS to grow up and actually play with the big boys.

TW

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[ferat]

Us geeks have more power than you give us credit for. Nobody in my extended family buys anything computer related without asking me first. Its annoying, I end up being tech support for all the aunts and uncles and cousins, but its the way it is.

They come to me and say "Hey, I want to do X with my computer, will *something they configured somewhere* do the job".

I'll say, "No, that's an EFI box, you don't want that", and they'll get something else I recommend.

Even non technical folks can understand a simple comment like "The only thing this 'new and exciting' technology gives you over the old tech is the ability to have someone else tell you what you can and can not do with your computer".

I turned everyone that asked me away from Divx (and the reason I mentioned above was the driving force behind people's decision to go with my recommendation), and I'll do the same with any trusted computing platform. And I'll advocate boycotting any company that tries to force it on us (hell, I still don't buy anything from Circuit City).

Re:Cue CmdrTaco's OpenBoot Troll

[greenrd]

Like Linus, I don't really see the problem with DRM per se. It's just a tool. Tools can be used for good or for evil. You'll still be able to watch movies on TV and at the cinema, and soon I expect someone will develop a cheap alternative to Windows based on a specific DRM-enabled binary Linux distro - to enable people to watch DRM stuff without having to shell out for Windows Vista.

What I'm slightly worried about is DRMed Word documents being output by default by MS Office 2010 or something - but I'm not too worried, because I think Microsoft will face huge legal, technological and PR problems if they decide to go down that route.

What about Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see Apple in there at all. They're going x86, I'd think it'd be in their best interests to be involved in the low level stuff so they can bolt on their Apple-specific goop a bit easier.

Re:What about Apple?

[DevNova]

"Apple = Intel"

Okay, did anyone else just shudder when they read this?

Re:What about Apple?

[SalesEngineer]

Apple is using EFI/UEFI for their new Intel Inside Macs, but they haven't joined the group yet.

UEFI, please read this.

[robyannetta]

The Linux community politely asks the Unified EFI Forum to not add DRM into EFI as this may be construed as anti-competive.

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[tmilam]

Do you really think they'll take linux into consideration? Of the companies listed, some are dead set against linux, and others, such as IBM and HP - have a vested interest in it. Really, ultimately DRM is unavoidable as it benefits big business. This scares me....Any chance we can get Novell or Red Hat into the UEFI?

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[eclectro]

The Linux community politely asks the Unified EFI Forum to not add DRM into EFI....

Dear Linux community;

DRM is the reason why Unified EFI was formed, otherwise we could stick with a known technology that works reasonably well and not spend heaps of cash to lockdown computers.
I know that you Linux guys never need to reboot, but many others spend significant amount time doing so. We will use this fact to force this technology adoption by the unwashed masses. We need to start collecting rental fees on everything sent to your computer, you know.

Love,

Your corporate pimp-daddy

P.S. Embrace us and don't fight us. It will be easier that way.

Re:UEFI, please read this.

[Punboy]

Funny, cause Intel, AMD, HP, and DELL are all four linux supporters. Seems to me that Microsoft is the only one that is anti-linux.

Apple

[Henriok]

So.. Is there really any doubt whether Apple will use EFI in their machines? Seriously.. they can't use BIOS now!

Re:Apple

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Is there really any doubt whether Apple will use EFI in their machines?

Yes. You'll note that they're not listed as a member. Not invited? Not interested? Working on something else? Will they just license the developed tech from Intel? Who knows. But it's interesting that Dell is there but Apple is not.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to make it clear, Open Firmware implementations exist for Intel hardware:
http://www.firmworks.com/open_firmware/literature/ open-fw.pdf

Why change?

Sceptical...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What's wrong with the PC BIOS anyway? Give or take a few gremlins when new technologies are first introduced, the basic tech seems to have adapted remarkably well for a very long time. Since flashable BIOS technology is now routine, even the early adopter problems don't seem like that great an issue. What's the replacement supposed to offer as an advantage over tried-and-tested, apart from a few buzzwords?

On a more sinister note, there's no mention in TFA of DRM and the idea of "trusted" computing, but I can't help wondering whether this isn't one of the main aims behind the scenes, given who's supporting this new organisation.

Re:Sceptical...

[Bert64]

It doesnt adapt well to serial consoles..
It has limitations on which parts of the disk it can boot from..
It's not scriptable..
It can't be configured in any ways other than what the "setup" program makes available to you..

OpenFirmware as used by SUN is much nicer, you can run diagnostics, write scripts, and get some low level information about the hardware attached... You can control the whole system from a serial console easily, and even install the OS from there..
You can also explicitely boot from any partition on your disk, instead of requiring a bootloader in the MBR to do the selection for you.

Re:Sceptical...

[Enigma_Man]

What is wrong with PC BIOS, a short list by me:

• Written in Assembly
• Not modularized
• Extremely craptistic source code
• Stuck with ancient ways of doing things
• At the mercy of the board manufacturer if you need features outside of what is provided
• etc, etc.

Believe me, I love assembly, and use it at any chance I get, but for something that is as complicated as a BIOS has become, it just isn't the right way to do it.

-Jesse

Re:Sceptical...

[CyricZ]

What language would you put it in? The bios seems like the perfect application for assembly code. The problem is that the bios needs to be kept simple.

Forth, with the Forth virtual machine/interpreter written in assembly. This is the sort of application that Forth excels at.

Re:Sceptical...

[Enigma_Man]

I'd write it in C, with some assembly hooks for the immediate boot process. The BIOS for modern PCs has to do a lot more than it used to: It has to initialize the hardware (which was the original intent, and is fine in assembly), but even that is getting much more complicated now, with networking, wireless, and video. Imagine having to edit BIOS options on a cluster of 300 PCs, it'd take you weeks using Award/AMI BIOS that don't have anything like serial or network console controllability. The big big use I see for something that isn't assembly is the booting process. That's the Achilles' Heel of the BIOS. Ever tried to boot off of a PCI-based SCSI adapter/drive? You probably can do that, but if you have two SCSI cards, you're screwed. The BIOS doesn't know or care how to tell the difference. USB boot is sketchy at best, and even CD-boot varies from manufacturer-to-manufacturer. The Award-BIOS source code is full of patches upon patches to support different quirky hardware that would be much better implemented in C. Things like large hard drive support would almost be trivial in C, but in assembly, you've go to change large swaths of code for larger bit-amounts for drive size. The newest size is 48-bit, which is a large number of TB, but drives keep getting bigger. The code itself is a gigantic mess of thousands of files with a loose grip on reality. There are circular dependencies from hell and code that just shouldn't exist.

-Jesse

Re:Sceptical...

[oxygene2k2]

we wrote the virtual machine in C - still small, and it's less maintenance that way

www.openbios.org

More info

[asliarun]

Read more about EFI here.

The SGI Indy boot PROM monitor.

[CyricZ]

I've always wanted something similar to the old SGI Indy boot PROM monitor, but on PCs. While similar technology is widespread on Sun and Apple machines, amonst others, it is far superior to the simple option-toggling capabilities of most PC BIOSes. The shell was quite handy, and the built-in diagnostic tests were even better.

Re:The SGI Indy boot PROM monitor.

[cmason]

I once had a very expensive SGI under my desk; I believe it was a dual processor Onyx, like $30k. One day I came in and I couldn't telnet to it. Hook up the serial console, reboot. The machine basically pointed at the scsi controller and said "You might want to have a look at that." Call up SGI tech support. They have me read them the diagnostic code; within five minutes of getting on the phone they're overnighting a new "logic carrier."

Being green as I was, I asked, "Does that have the SCSI controller on it?"

"Yes," the tech answers, "along with just about everything else."

Now, what arrived by FedEx was indeed basically a new motherboard, complete with processors, etc. Slide the old one out, the new one in, back in business in about a half hour (most of that because the entire lab was watching and I didn't want to screw up). I have to say I was impressed that the machine was able to diagnose itself down to a level lower than what could be replaced in the field.

The moral of the story is that, boot diagnostics are cool because you spend less time on the phone. I've never had such an experience with a PC, where if you're lucky you get a couple LEDs. I guess that's what you get for $30k.

Re:The SGI Indy boot PROM monitor.

[labratuk]

The moral of the story is that, boot diagnostics are cool because you spend less time on the phone. I've never had such an experience with a PC, where if you're lucky you get a couple LEDs. I guess that's what you get for $30k.

Mmm. That would be nice, but you see the problem is that SGIs didn't generally have to cope with a lot of third party hardware. Everything that the firmware would ever communicate with was pretty much known before the box left the factory.

PCs have a huge amount of (often obscure) third party hardware available for them. What makes this even worse is that lots of the standards are often developed after the bios was shipped. How many motherboards do you have which were bought before SATA was widespread? Firewire? It ain't gonna be very clever when you add an SATA card.

In the past, BIOSes have coped with this by being fairly abstract to these things - as a consequence they're pretty dumb and don't have (m)any clever diagnostics.

Buy it's not so simple when you have a world where there are x hundred IDE chipsets, y hundred ethernet controllers, z thousand graphics chips and 100,000 UNKNOWN DEVICES.

Who's doing what....?

[Rahga]

Intel,
Maker of overpriced, underperforming processors...

AMD,
Leading manufacturer of budget CPUs.....

Microsoft,
Singlehandedly proved that breaking antitrust law can be worth the hassle....

IBM,
Services provider de jour....

Dell
Master of manufacturing, jack of no other trades.

HP
Titanic 2000.

Wow, what a dream team.

Re:Who's doing what....?

[aardwolf64]

Those are the leaders of the PC market. Perhaps you were expecting someone like eMachines? Had you looked at the article, you would have seen even former industry giants such as AMI and Phoenix, former creators of BIOSes.

Re:Insyde?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are a bios firm.

http://www.insydesw.com.tw/

One thing UEFI will certainly do is...

[squoozer]

... make it about as hard as possible, if not impossible, to impliment a completely free open source operating system. I reckon that is all but guaranteed.

My bet wpuld be on some weird and wonderful, not very good, patented DRM technology that will be forced on it by one of the partners and cross licensed to the others for peanuts. Of course those won't be the licensing terms given to other people

Thinking of licensing terms I have another grumble but I think I'll spare you that one for now [walks off to grumble elsewhere]...

Re:One thing UEFI will certainly do is...

[pp]

Yea right...

Linux has been booting on EFI Itanium boxes since the beginning, even before there was a 64-bit Windows (outside MSFT labs, that is :-) ).

EFI is certainly not pretty, but it's still a great improvement.

this wont kill Linux

[FudRucker]

there already is too much of a demand for Linux, either UEFI will accept Linux or some motherboard MFGer's will continue to produce mainboards with the old PC BIOS, i don't like the sound of UEFI and will probably go out of my way just to not purchase boards with it...

Re:Hmm... wolves among the sheep...

[Shadowsinger]

True, Dell tends to meander along behind whatever the crowd has already done, but IBM and HP both have vested interests in Linux. Somehow, I can't see them allowing MS bully-rights on this one.

Re:I dunno....

[maxwell demon]

Did you hear the plans of Duke Nukem Forever to replace PC BIOS? The advantages are:

• Intuitive shoot to boot interface.
• PC health parameters immediatly visible through scene (e.g. if your processor is running hot, you'll get a desert).
• If your OS doesn't boot any more, you still can have fun with your computer.

Ignorance is bliss....

[Manip]

I'm sorry but do you people take the time to read up before you complain? This is a wonderful opportunity for the open source movement. EFI makes booting multiple operating systems like a thousand times easier. Instead of having a single boot record on the hard disk boot information is stored in a data table and given as an option to the user who selections the OS they want.

This means that Linux can be installed without breaking the existing installations or screwing with the boot loader at all. The DRM is a problem but there is not too much information about if there is going to be a lot of DRM in this new bios replacement.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[wirerat1]

Who are you kidding? While you dismiss the DRM portion by consoling yourself with the notion that there might not be much of it because its not talked about in detail is ludicrious. Of course they aren't going to flail their arms about and go "LOOK HERE! WE ARE GOING TO TAKE YOUR ABILITY TO DO STUFF WITH YOUR PC AWAY!!!" Come on, get real. It will be mentioned as little as possible.

Re:Ignorance is bliss....

[atokata]

I'm sorry but do you people take the time to read up before you complain? This is a wonderful opportunity for the open source movement. EFI makes booting multiple operating systems like a thousand times easier. Instead of having a single boot record on the hard disk boot information is stored in a data table and given as an option to the user who selections the OS they want.

A thousand times? Is it really *that* hard right now? It seems like EFI is basically just moving GRUB from the MBR into a bit of flash rom, then adding DRM to make sure I'm not trying to boot an OS the EFI chip doesn't approve of.

This means that Linux can be installed without breaking the existing installations or screwing with the boot loader at all. The DRM is a problem but there is not too much information about if there is going to be a lot of DRM in this new bios replacement.

I can do all of this with existing technology. And without DRM. You imply that people having doubts in regards to this technology have those feelings out of ignorance, yet you yourself say that "...there is not too much information...there is going to be a lot of DRM..."

So, basically, we should be exicited that a number of tech companies want to replace a working technolgy with a version, which while it may work marginally better, will also prevent us from using and controlling the use of our machines as we see fit? Now *that's* ignorance.

Todays BIOS

[BigDuke6_swe]

Please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the BIOS of today backwards compatible with a lot of obsolete hardware that require the BIOS to still behave in a certain way? I belive there were hardware components that for example required that BIOS waited for a certain amount of time before processing some commands due to their startup time. And as years has passed by new features have been added while the old ones are kept and at some point it's a unnecesarily messy code.

Best of all this will be Open Sourced by Intel!

[Anonymous Coward]

The source code for Intel's implementation of EFI can be found at http://www.tianocore.org/

Also, this standard should finally allow seemless integration of new hardware onto the linux desktop. The main hurdle for desktop linux has always been lack of seemless driver integration.

No Linux Support?

[oostevo]

Sorry if this spoils your conspiracy theories, but there's already a project on SourceForge (called ELILO) to support the EFI standard.

And there's a link on the main page of the Intel EFI page.

Nail on the head right there...

[Pollux]

What's wrong with the PC BIOS anyway? ... On a more sinister note, there's no mention in TFA of DRM and the idea of "trusted" computing.

According to the Overview page, Microsoft's listed as the only OS maker. First, why isn't Apple among the lineup? Novell? Red Hat Linux? Perhaps it's because they're not part of the real circle of friends...

Enter Microsoft's Trusted Computer Platform. According to the TCPA FAQ, the companies belonging to the alliance are: "Microsoft, Intel, IBM, HP and AMD". And let's take a look here...yep, they're all there. But what are they really planning?

According to the specifications page, nothing's listed as far as features that are to be included (" The UEFI specification is in development"). But currently, since there is no mention as to the true intent of this new technology, and right now the BIOS isn't broken, why reinvent the wheel? Load times are now less than three seconds, which is a tremendous step from BIOS beginnings. New equipment continues to be supported through new BIOS updates. So what do these companies need that the current BIOS can't give them?

Enter DRM. According to Microsoft's Patent on their DRM-supported OS, Microsoft has a few issues with the current BIOS...This AEGIS model requires a tamper-resistant BIOS that has hard-wired into it the signature of the following stage. This scheme has the very considerable advantage that it works well with current microprocessors and the current PC architecture, but has three drawbacks.

1) First, the set of trusted operating systems or trusted publishers must be wired into the BIOS.

2) Second, if the content is valuable enough (for instance, e-cash or Hollywood videos), users will find a way of replacing the BIOS with one that permits an insecure boot.

3) Third, when obtaining data from a network server, the client has no way of proving to the remote server that it is indeed running a trusted system.

So, Microsoft admits that there are flaws that prevent them from using the BIOS in their Trusted Computing platform. But create a new way of booting a computer, protect the technical details from public view, and put the power of the DMCA behind it, and you have a nice foundation into the DRM frontier.

Time to stock up...

[slashname3]

Time to stock up on BIOS based systems. Once they get this change pushed through all new systems will be forced to ship with EFI. And the bets are running toward them incorporating some kind of DRM which will prevent alternative OSes from running on these new systems.

20 years from now there will be a huge market for "free" computers that don't have EFI/DRM built into the system. Of course by then it will be illegal to connect a non EFI/DRM system to the Internet. But a persitant group of hackers will devise numerous methods to mask "free" computers from the corporate Internet police (CIP) which routinely scan all systems connected to the Internet looking for non-compliant systems. And in further efforts to eliminate the hacker menace the new EFI standards will be designed to scan a computers hard drives looking for signs of any activity deemed illegal by the CIP. This of course leads to several people having their doors knocked down and flash bangs thrown through the windows as the CIP confiscates their systems when they find more than a few dozen mp3 files on the users computer systems which don't have proper DRM tags.

Many more people will have their systems confiscated and accounts frozen when their computers report back that they used certain terms in IM sessions and email such as "she was the bomb last night!"

Of course the system will omit everything but the term "bomb".

Use a Mac

[phillymjs]

...to find out why BIOS is antiquated crap. Apple didn't invent Open Firmware, but they make very good use of it.

Four examples:
-Hold down a key at startup to boot from CD/DVD.
-Hold down a different key at startup to boot from a network volume (if available).
-Hold down another different key at startup to give you a menu of all bootable volumes, and boot from the one you want-- external, internal, it doesn't matter.
-Hold down yet another different key at startup to have the machine act as an external hard drive.

The features above make troubleshooting a wayward, non-booting Mac a breeze, and they come in very handy at other times as well. If you encounter a non-booting Windows PC, you almost always need another computer nearby to effectively troubleshoot and fix it.

Ever since Apple announced the move to Intel, I've been a little worried about losing those features-- but I'm hopeful that they will find a way to keep them alive on Intel-based Macs.

~Philly

Re:Use a Mac

[Lorkki]

With my PC, if I press a key, I get to a menu where I can choose from a number of boot methods, including network boot. My laptop's BIOS also has a special feature that allows me to boot straight off a CD/DVD by pressing a different key. With the right boot disk it's a breeze to, say, save files from affected partitions to USB/CD/DVD media, (re)install a bootloader or fix the partition table, without having to touch another computer.

So no, that's not really the key functional difference. It's the internals and their flexibility that counts far more. For starters, the PC BIOS requires some of the hardware to initialise to what's essentially a legacy mode, retained for compatibility with the IBM PC circa 1983 and resulting in some rather useless weight in modern operating systems.

Re:Use a Mac

[jridley]

New machines also do all that from BIOS, with the added feature that they give you a menu. I was trying to install an OS on an old G3 box I got out of the closet at work, and it took a bit of googling to figure out that I needed to hold down a key to boot from CD. On a PC, at boot time it says "press Fxx for boot menu" - you press that, it shows what things are there to boot from, you pick one. Nothing to remember, one key to press.

I'm seriously thinking about switching to Mac, but since the Mac came out, I've been amused by people saying things like "See, no difficult menus and words to read, you just press System+Open-Apple+backspace+q to switch modes! So much easer and intuitive!" People can convince themselves of anything, especially if they're trying to be counter-culture or are defending their choices.

As far as features working on intel-based machines, anyone who's had even a little programming experience should know that the processor doesn't matter; you can do whatever you want on whatever CPU you have, the only difference will be suitability to certain tasks (as in, how fast can it do the things that make what you want to do fast and efficient, like matrix transforms, vector math, fast I/O, memory blitting, etc). Any modern CPU can do anything any other modern CPU can do, just at different speeds for different tasks.

Re:Use a Mac

[phillymjs]

Yeah, but that's with that particular PC and laptop model. Abilities can vary wildly from one manufacturer and model to the next. Even if some PCs share the same BIOS features, they can still differ in the implementation.

It's the 21st century, and IMHO those features need to be standard across the board-- hell, until a few years ago I couldn't even count 100% on every PC I encountered in the field being able to boot from a CD, much less do any of the other stuff I mentioned in my previous post.

And like you said, having the right boot disk matters for you. For me, I can put a hosed Mac into target mode and connect it as an external drive to any Mac with a FireWire port, to attempt to repair it and/or retrieve data. With a PC you've still got to crack it open and recable at best, or take the whole drive out and put it in a new machine at worst. I've tried out BartPE and a couple other useful boot disks, but having to chase down all the components I need is a pain, and it's hard to make one that is truly universal when it comes to NIC drivers, etc (my company supports a *lot* of different machines).

Blowing the twenty year-old cruft out would be nice, like you said, but I still say the addition of useful features as a standard is what's needed the most.

~Philly

Re:Use a Mac

[drewm1980]

Having your debugging be dependent on having a working display (so you can see said menu) is emphatically ~NOT an advantage. If the screen dies on your mac laptop, you can boot while holding 't' (stands for "target disk mode") to turn it into a firewire drive. Plug it into another mac, power up holding the 'option' key (stands for "option") and you can select to boot from the broken machine's drive. Copy your files over to the second machine or even just keep working like nothing happened until you can get your broken machine repaired. What will you do when the graphics break on your wintel laptop? Will retrieving your files be as easy as holding down a key and plugging it into another machine?

You know the old saying.....

[mkw87]

If it ain't broke....

tear apart until it is.

Good that the BIOS is finally going away

[jonwil]

One thing I want to see in a BIOS replacement is for the new firmware to go into protected mode directly as one of the first things it does after setting up whatever it has to set up in real mode.
Then OS's that run on the new firmware standard would come in with a pre-defined protected mode setup ready to go and not have to mess around with switching into protected mode (OS's like windows and linux will need to be ported anyway)

I am not a systems programmer (I have programmed assembly but only as a userland programmer) so I dont know if doing this is actually possible or not.

Something else I want to see is a complete end to all limitations on what storage devices you can boot from and where on those devices you can boot from. (for example, any limitations on not being able to boot from partitions starting later than on the disk which I seem to remember used to be a problem)

You could even add a complete bootloader into the BIOS that would be able to read the boot sector from any hard disk partition, floppy disk (although in the ideal world, the floppy would disappear from the PC just like it has from the mac), optical media, USB storage device or whatever and boot that directly without the need for programs like GRUB and LILO and others to let you pick what to boot with.

By removing all the other legacy crap no-one really uses anymore (e.g. serial and paralel ports) you could create a new PC system without any legacy stuff. Done right, the only things that should care about the changes are operating systems like linux and windows plus device drivers for certain kinds of hardware.

Re:Good that the BIOS is finally going away

[VENONA]

"By removing all the other legacy crap no-one really uses anymore (e.g. serial and paralel ports)..."

I really get tired of all the people who think their computing environment is the only computing environment. That's exactly the attitude which has lead to half the world believing that the Windows PC is sysnonymous with computing.

For instance, I use the serial port on my workstation. Like many others, I have an external modem hanging from it. 4-5 years, that was the most reliable means of home Internet access for Linux users. Avoid Winmodems, and all that.

Secondly, it's still useful to be able to dial into client servers--some have a service modem. Thirdly, it's pretty much a requirement in setting up Linux or a BSD on the small appliance machines from Soekris engineering, etc.

Repeat after me, "There are other computing environments than my own."

Remember USB?

[theolein]

It was Apple that popularised it. I can imagine that Apple will be one of the first to EFI as well, since the others have major legacy problems to contend with.

Re:I'm confused?

[MisterMurphy]

It seems to be a fear of control. When you have complete co-operation between every single layer of a machine, the ability of those in co-operation to dictate terms increases dramatically. If the new CPUs and Mobos only work with EFI, and EFI only lets you boot into DRMed material, and they refuse to license their DRM methods for reasonable amounts, then they can functionally decide what can be done with the computers they create and sell.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

cupieDoll man give

[crovira]

I totally agree. You can write an absolutely tiny Forth interpreter and define the rest in Forth words.

I don't think we need to get too fancy and, it could even support multiple machine architectures, since once the interpreter is loaded, you're running in Forth.

Who does Apple need to convince?

[Rufosx]

Seriously, why would they need to join the group promoting EFI? Apple just has to decide to use it, put it in every Mac and that's it. There's not a bunch of motherboard and chipset makers to convince.

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[garcia]

As with everytime I post a comment about DRM, someone has to come along and say, "but see, there's a way around it!" Wrong.

DRM'd OSs will not work if the hardware they run on isn't DRM'd as well. This initiative (along with others that may flurish if this doesn't work -- i.e. Phoenix BIOS) is to make certain that the hardware is protected as well so that people won't be able to easily circumvent the restrictions.

Why would they bother to go through all of this if it didn't matter?

I'm going fully Mac when the x86 powermacs come out anyway so Windows is just going to be something I use for emulation purposes.

An obvious troll but I'll respond anyway: Windows will not run in emulation because of DRM. Sure, they might get an emulation layer up and running but it certainly won't be able to do anything that you would be able to do w/the "appropriate" hardware/software... Software will be trusted. Trusted software will not run on emulation layers.

Sorry, welcome to the future.

Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that aims to remove the rubbish PC bios which is 20 years past it's used by date can't be anything other than a good thing.

And AMD / Intel / Dell / IBM make far too much money selling linux servers or chips that run OS OSes to try and curb that market.

Re:It's about time...

[SilverspurG]

Lack of documentation is the single biggest reason I have not yet invested the time to learn *nix

Say what?

The Otherside of DRM

[transami]

I agree, the main drive here is DRM. And for a long time I've been anti-DRM (seeing how poor I am and all) But I've recently had a new outlook. I think DRM is important. It's important for people to have certain safeguards. That's only fair. BUT (and its a big BUT) DRM is also ripe for abuse. For the consumer, potential abuses such as region and device differntiation that requires paying for the same contant multiple times, or not being able to protect against data loss w/ backups. For the artist, in that the recording companies will control the DRM technology and set the entry bar too high driving independent artist out of the market. Not to mention OSS being left out in the cold too.

I think what the anti-DRMs need to do is change their focus. Compromise with the big companies over DRM ensuring us common folk good Fair-Use laws. Then everyone will be happy.

Re:You can simply circumvent it...

[CdBee]

If you actually read my comment you'd see that I'm saying I don't mind DRM hardware and DRM software because I will not use any application that uses DRM. That also applies for when I go Mac - maybe my Mac will have DRM built in to protect iTMS purchases. So what. I don't buy music online. Or any other media thats subject to DRM.

Nor will I use any app that DRM's its files..

Re:???

[vertinox]

So I'm a bit bitter about this: if we can't get enough people to talk with their wallets, we will soon truly have two internets: one for the masses, all EFI'd and bright-shiny-new, and one for the geeks who run ten year old hardware, because that's the last pieces which rolled off without EFI.

Wait a minute... Isn't it us geeks who buy the "bright-shiny-new" hardware before everyone else does? Or maybe are people being duped into buying 256mb $500 video cards to do word processing (hell from my understanding perhaps they are).

So if no one is taking the "first buy" leap then what will happen? Will someone come along and fill in the gap?

You know.... This might make the internet just like the TV was in the 90's and we'll have to come up with another BBS type of system.

Re:Puhleeez

[DeathPenguin]

Open Firmware is a specification, not an implementation. In case you want an open-source implementation of Open Firmware, check out OpenBIOS. OpenBIOS can also be used as a payload for LinuxBIOS.

"Linux Supporters"

[overshoot]

Funny, cause Intel, AMD, HP, and DELL are all four linux supporters. Seems to me that Microsoft is the only one that is anti-linux.

All five would be more than happy to have "Linux" be redefined as a cryptographically-signed binary supported by a "responsible" company such as Novell or Red Hat.

The first four, because it suits their corporate customers. Debian, Gentoo, etc. just divert efforts away from supporting the two major distributions that Really Matter.

Microsoft, of course, because they know how to "deal with" corporate entities.

From Microsoft's point of view, F/OSS really is like terrorism. Honest. Like national armies, they know how to wage war against similar entites with known addresses, but have a hard time getting traction against amorphous movements which won't stay put for the ICBM treatment.

Re:Odd man out

[overshoot]

I'm curious as to why Dell is involved

Intel and Microsoft told them to.

mod parent up

[stefanPryor]

I know perhaps not everyone on slashdot believes in the benifits of Freedom software, however if you look at the parent link you will see that firmware which stores the bios is programmable these days. Many people have said in response to this article "good now we can finally have a proper BIOS that does what it should". However there are already several open BIOS alternatives available. LinuxBIOS and OpenBIOS are both mentioned in the discussion here.

The obstacle to a free BIOS is the reluctance of manufacturers to releast the necessary information to allow the BIOS to control the hardware.

Perhaps if they allow their hardware to be freely programmable they will be excluded from the "trusted computing" allowable hardware?

I have a question, if anyone is familiar with this. Do hardware manufacturers take the specs for a BIOS and port it to their hardware when installing it, or do they release their specifications to the BIOS developers?

Perhaps we are needing freedom hardware manufacturers. I wonder, if the F/OSS community was to design specs for free hardware would there be any incentive for someone to manufacture it?

I suppose it depends on how much of a market there is for a totally free/customizable computing system.