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BIOS Will Be Dead In Three Years

Posted by kdawson on from the legacy-notwithstanding dept.

Stoobalou writes with news that MSI is planning a big shift towards UEFI (universal extensible firmware interface) at the end of 2010, possibly spelling the beginning of the end of the BIOS as we know it. "It's the one major part of the computer that's still reminiscent of the PC's primordial, text-based beginnings, but the familiarly clunky BIOS could soon be on its deathbed, according to MSI. The motherboard maker says it's now making a big shift towards point-and-click UEFI systems, and it's all going to kick off at the end of this year. Speaking to Thinq, a spokesperson for the company in Taiwan who wished to remain anonymous said, 'MSI will start to phase in UEFI starting from the end of this year, and we expect it will be widely adopted after three years.'"

3 of 532 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That is the worst reporting on EFI I've ever read. They spend half the article trying to make the false claim that the switch from BIOS to EFI has anything to do with its visual interface (I was using a pixel-and-mouse-based GUI BIOS 15 years ago and I was using a text-only EFI interface just a couple days ago). Then they end with a quote about how the biggest difference between BIOS and EFI is that EFI is written in C? How would that have any relevance? Maybe they were trying to say that EFI requires the execution of architecture-independent code (the EFI Bytecode)?

    Sadly there was no mention of Open Firmware, either. Is there any reason Intel made their own Open Firmware knock-off beyond NIH syndrome?

  2. Re:whats old is new again by PalmKiller · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Hey here is a nice pic of WinBIOS I found...copyright was 1994, so you got the street date about right :).

    http://www.funkygoods.com/schwarzschild/2008_11/ami_titan_05_s.jpg

  3. DRM with UEFI by KonoWatakushi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As far as I know, the major "feature" of UEFI over the original EFI is signed modules, ultimately allowing for control over what may be booted. The original EFI, while still bloated and overly complex (though considerably less so), would have been a clear improvement over the BIOS. However, the current incarnation of UEFI may be downright dangerous to our freedoms.

    As bad as the BIOS is, at least we can run the OS of our choice. With UEFI, we still may--for now. Unfortunately, that "feature" may be removed in the future, just as Sony did with Linux on the PS3.

    Or at least that is how I understand it. There was a lot of concern over this in the past, but strangely, I haven't seen much recently. I would love to be rid of the BIOS, but something like coreboot would be much better, as it would allow for a completely open platform, and is focused on actually booting the machine.