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BIOS Will Be Dead In Three Years
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.'"
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?
They'll do the same with EFI.
traditional BIOS are an archaic nightmare really.
Most new technologies in them are work around hacks required to maintain some support for very old communication protocols (6GB SATA drives still have to support IDE mode why?) etc.
Give this a read:
http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/how-computers-boot-up
...with an insanely complex load of crap (but it's "graphical" so it must be better).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I think they're just wrong to put the stress on EFI being "a point and click interface". I was under the impression (correct me if I'm wrong) that the deal with EFI is that it was a design of firmware for the system that ditches a lot of old legacy stuff. Incidentally, by upgrading the design, it will allow manufacturers to create a GUI to configure this stuff. But the GUI isn't really the point.
From the faq at uefi.org:
Q: Does UEFI completely replace a PC BIOS?
A: No. While UEFI uses a different interface for "boot services" and "runtime services", some platform firmware must perform the functions BIOS uses for system configuration (a.k.a. "Power On Self Test" or "POST") and Setup. UEFI does not specify how POST & Setup are implemented.
Oblig:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFI
It's more a strategy to remove 16-bit and other legacy restrictions from the firmware interface:
"The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. EFI is a much larger, more complex,[1][2]:4 replacement for the older BIOS firmware interface present in all IBM PC-compatible personal computers."
*Still* negative function...
http://www.funkygoods.com/schwarzschild/2008_11/ami_titan_05_s.jpg
Macs went to EFI over four years ago. Hard to believe it took the windows machines this long to take the leap?
The average user doesn't know and wouldn't give a shit if they did. Ergo, this kind of change in the PC market is driven by the interests of the vendors, as the consumer essentially has none. That said, it's worth noting that some consumer PCs have used EFI since 2003 and Itanium workstations were using EFI back in 2000, and x64 versions of Windows added support for EFI in 2008.
BIOS is the bane of the PC service tech. That's where manufacturers lock up the hardware and prevent you from being able to fix it or work on it.
It's worth noting that one advantage of EFI to vendors is precisely that it better enables them to lock down a system than BIOS does. While it doesn't have to be used that way, you can safely bet that many vendors will use it that way to the detriment of the consumer. It's also not without (in my opinion, valid) criticism for adding additional complexity to the system without actually resolving the problems of BIOS.
The main advantage appears lie in offering a GUI for end users to manipulate system settings that they lack the knowledge or inclination to tinker with. To be fair, it does add some convenience features and better support for large drives, but I haven't seen anything about EFI to get terribly excited about.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
HW Manufacturers will require EFI firmware to be signed in order to install it. See "executable verification" in this PDF
If phrases like, "CMOS Settings," and, "IDE Controller," aren't descriptive enough for you, or they seem complicated and semi-unintelligible
Replaced with icons that look meaningless like squashed bugs, and names like "My CMOS Settings" and "My IDE Controller"
And Clippy. Don't forget Clippy.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.
Read: http://kerneltrap.org/node/6884
Linus continued in a followup email, "don't get me wrong - the problem with EFI is that it actually superficially looks much better than the BIOS, but in practice it ends up being one of those things where it has few real advantages, and often just a lot of extra complexity because of the 'new and improved' interfaces that were largely defined by a committee." He went on, "so EFI has this cool shell, a loadable driver framework, and other nice features. Where 'nice' obviously means 'much more complex than the simple things they designed in the late seventies back when people were stupid and just wanted things to work'. Of course, it's somewhat questionable whether people have actually gotten smarter or stupider in the last 30 years. It's not enough time for evolution to have increased our brain capacity, but it certainly _is_ enough time for most people to no longer understand how hardware works any more." As for BIOS, Linus noted, "not that I'd ever claim that the BIOS is wonderful either, but at least everybody knows that the BIOS is just a bootloader, and doesn't try to make it anything else."
Useless abstraction layers are useless.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
I see you are trying to boot your computer.
Do you want to:
* mess around with the boot options to make it non-functional?
* reformat your drive containing critical key data?
* boot into the all new ClippyOS 3.1?
Making the BIOS settings accessible to more stupid people will not make computer maintenance easier. Anyone too dumb to figure out how to use BIOS as it exists now has no business being there in the first place.
I haven't seen a floppy in almost 10 years.
I'm glad you got over your erectile dysfunction.
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