Goodbye to the BIOS

[HalloweenJack]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11430069

Bios' replacement, known as UEFI, will predominate in new PCs by 2011.

The acronym stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface and is designed to be more flexible than its venerable predecessor.

"Conventional Bios is up there with some of the physical pieces of the chip set that have been kicking around the PC since 1979," said Mark Doran, head of the UEFI Forum, which is overseeing development of the technology.

nice

[Biscuit]

bout time... dunno if it will follow through though. MSI tried a while back and it didnt catch on then.

[aidanjt]

Can't happen soon enough.

[scaryjim]

It'd be great if they'd caught it a couple of years ago when UEFI was starting to proliferate already

I believe (in a rare showing of technological innovation) that Macs have been using EFI for at least a couple of years... (although no doubt I'll be shot down in flames if I'm wrong ).

But yes, it will be nice to see UEFI become the standard in the PC world as well: just imagine it, we'll have proper graphical tools for overclocking, instead of the incessant tweaking of white-on-blue numbers...

[Biscuit]

yeah macs ave been using EFI for a while now

[peterb]

The BBC is a little behind the curve - UEFI is hardly news tbh - the EFI (extensible Firmware Interface) the predecessor of the UEFI has been around for a while. It has been adopted by Apple and is also used on some hi-end server mobos. There is also support for it in the LINUX kernels. EFI became UEFI around 2005, and the first EFI (server) machines were released in 2000.

However it is noteworthy that there is a drive to make more widely available on consumer/end user machines. IN concept it is similar to the very early Apple Macs where part of the OS was embedded in Firmware which also gave very fast boot times.

There must still be some hard code that links the hardware to the OS but it is much reduced in size and not limited to the 16 bit BIOS system. The other advantage is the support for the GUID boot and partituion system which replaces the MBR and 'traditional' DOS based partition table.

[aidanjt]

bout time... dunno if it will follow through though. MSI tried a while back and it didnt catch on then.

They didn't exactly push for it, and Windows XP was still the primary OS everyone was using at the time, which had no UEFI compatibility at all, you know, since Vista 'sucked' and all that hyperbolic jazz. They still have images for compatible boards, but they haven't added to anything other than the 3 P45 boards from way back, none of them particularly great either.

[aidanjt]

The BBC is a little behind the curve - UEFI is hardly news tbh - the EFI (extensible Firmware Interface) the predecessor of the UEFI has been around for a while. It has been adopted by Apple and is also used on some hi-end server mobos. There is also support for it in the LINUX kernels. EFI became UEFI around 2005, and the first EFI (server) machines were released in 2000.

However it is noteworthy that there is a drive to make more widely available on consumer/end user machines. IN concept it is similar to the very early Apple Macs where part of the OS was embedded in Firmware which also gave very fast boot times.

There must still be some hard code that links the hardware to the OS but it is much reduced in size and not limited to the 16 bit BIOS system. The other advantage is the support for the GUID boot and partituion system which replaces the MBR and 'traditional' DOS based partition table.

I think they're making the case (well the people they talked to are), that UEFI is ready go to mainstream, with Windows XP dropping off strongly, as Windows 7 is gaining so much ground, it's a fair assessment.

[geezerone]

I wonder when we will realistically see this next year and if it will make it into the next gen motherboards for Sandybridge and Bulldozer?

New architectures and now UEFI - 2011 should be an interesting year for technology.

[Terbinator]

I thought Intels' own (Smackover and the like) current boards used (U)EFI ?

[mikerr]

This is becoming more urgent, as no PC can boot from a > 2TB disk without EFI.