Extensible Firmware Interfaces

See also: EFI

Today the Extensible Firmware Interfaces (EFI), replaced by the UEFI (Unified EFI) is an intermediate software between the microsoftware (firmware) and the operating system (OS) of a Ordinateur, and is nevertheless true small a Operating system. This interface has to be the successor of BIOS.

The EFI offers multiple advantages compared to the BIOS, it is thus able to deal with much functionalities networks integrated out of standard; it can also propose a true graphical interface high-resolution and offers an integrated management of the multiple installations of Operating systems.

Whereas the BIOS is written in Assembleur, the EFI is entirely developed in C, which confers a certain flexibility for its future trends to him. Developed so as to offer a greater independence between the operating system and the material platform on which it turns, the EFI is available on the platforms varied such as Itanium (IA-64), x86 (32bits and 64bits).

AMD, American Megatrends, Dell, HP, Intel, IBM, Insyde, Microsoft and Phoenix Technologies constitute today within the UEFI forum of the major actors around this technology. These firms currently work on the specifications of the UEFI and published the official specifications of the UEFI 2.0 (Unified EFI Specifications - specifications of Unified EFI (extensible and unified micrologicielle interface)) at the beginning of 2006.

Operating systems

the system baseds on Linux are able to manage the EFI with the boot since 2000 by using the charger of Elilo starting. It can be used by platforms IA-64, IA-32 and offers a catch of load for the x86-64 since July 2007.

HP-UX uses the EFI on its systems IA-64 since 2002.

Apple, as for him, adopted the EFI for the last computers Apple. Mac OS X v10.4 " Tiger" for Intel and Mac OS X v10.5 " Leopard" entirely take charges the EFI with them.

Microsoft Windows:

The versions Itanium of Windows 2000 supported the EFI 1.1 in 2002.

Windows Server 2003 for IA64, Windows XP 64-bit and Windows 2000 Advanced Server Limited Edition, based on Intel Itanium support the EFI.

The initial version of Microsoft Windows Vista does not contain management of the UEFI (the version x64 of Vista with the service pack 1 (SP1) should however provide this management). The first version of the operating system for waiters “Windows Server 2008” should also deal with the UEFI only on the version 64bits of the system (Itanium and x64). The posterior versions with these systems should also adopt the same strategy.

See too

External references

the EFI by Intel
official site of the UEFI forum
the successor of the BIOS
No EFI for Vista

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