No more BIOS, say hello to EFI

[Helevitia]

Sounds like a good idea. Between this change and the new user interface similar to fdisk coming out of microsoft, I am looking forward to the changes.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2130826,00.html

Dave

[Jon P. Inghram]

Assuming it doesn't further "Trusted Computing"... I'm getting paranoid about any new PC technology.

[LvR]

So now if "Big Brother" is asleep and cannot watch you, then his live-in cousin will do the job locally for you.

I cannot find it now, (Register?/Inquirer?) but in the last 2 weeks I remember seeing a report that this technology will allow a machine to dialup/connect with a server somewhere to download/configure/screwup my life with no OS installed on the disk.

For pure technical reasons it may be a good idea, but just like JPI I have my doubts about how exactly this can be used to further "DRM" and "trusted computing" - let alone trusted human beings..........

[Helevitia]

Just like anything else, I am sure there will be a way to disble the "auto" features

Dave

[Wombat]

I guess I'm probably the expert on this here.

I've worked with EFI. I've booted machines that use it, loaded Unix over it, and I've used the EFI programming interface to write my own OS handoffs.

EFI rocks. Intel came up with it largely because BIOS flash sizes are getting ridiculous. Boards right now are looking at 2MB of nv RAM, and some places would like to have 8(!)MB. EFI puts a nice, basic bootstrap in a small nv RAM, and then loads drivers and whatnot off of the hard drive.

A couple of my favorite things about EFI:
* Finally, the boot loader is independent of the operating systems on the box. F*ck you, Microsoft.

* Even on an utterly hosed OS install, you can get to an EFI prompt, move around, check hardware status, and load drivers to do at least basic things from the CLI

* EFI supports its own limited form of shell scripting, nsh.

* The EFI environment is good enough that you can keep things like simple ftp clients on the machine, so you can easily move a working OS bootstrap over to the machine, and booting off of the LAN is so simple it's almost stupid.

* An OS doesn't <I>have</I> to be EFI aware to run on an EFI box. If the OS can't use EFI to its advantage, EFI just kinda gets blown away during the boot process.

* OSes will be largely relieved of the problem where the hardware requires drivers it doesn't have. This is for things like hardware newer than the OS, or the best example is the 3rd party drivers hassle when installing on a RAIDed machine.
Basically, it goes like this:
- The machine is powered on, and EFI has set itself up at home.
- Something makes EFI boot an OS.
- OS says, "Hey EFI, I'm booting. Pass me a list of all the devices you've got."
...
"Hey EFI, hand me a pointer to this XYZ device, and I'll automatically use the generic protocols that let me interact with the device using the drivers you set up."

There's lots of other good stuff, but overall, I'm quite happy that EFI seems to be spreading. Also, LvR, there's nothing nefarious that EFI can do that today's BIOS and/or spyware can't already do.

[Paddy]

cool.

What mobo's have you used with this?

[Wombat]

IA-64 boards of various manufacture. IA-64 stuff is required to support EFI. 32-bit boxes should start seeing it soon, hopefully. It would be really smart to roll out EFI on 3GIO boxes.

[Ribbit]

This sounds like the kind of thing that real computers - e.g. SPARCs, Alphas, etc. - have had since day one. Nice to see it coming the way of us mere mortals

[Jammrock]

ROFL!!

The tech looks really cool but uh ... reminds me of the old Compaq BIOS. Compaq wanted the aforementioned 8 MB BIOS so they could write in a GUI and mouse drivers into the BIOS, but the nvRAM was too costly, so they loaded a proprietary partition (of course) to the HDD that had mouse drivers and the GUI for the BIOS.

Can't wait to get my hands on an EFI board to play with

Jammrock

[Technoid]

If it loads stuff of the drive, what will happen if you don't have one atached or the one that is dies???

Sounds like the awfull Compaq idea as Jammrock said.....

And It also reminds me of LinuxBios

[Claymonkey]

I agree with Technoid and Jammrock. I HATE Compaq bios.. when I boot up a computer I want to be able to test it without a harddrive attached... what happens if the ide channel or southbridge has gone T!TS up? I still want to be able to unplug EVERYTHING and still diagnose stuff...

Thumbdrives are really cheap, just take that tech and solder 32MB of cheap ram onto the board... problem solved

[Claymonkey]

and yeah I know that adds cost, but so does every new integration on a motherboard. I mean on board serial ports added tons of cost to the board at first

[Wombat]

Hey, a LOT of EFI fits in that standard flash RAM. A diskless box will work just fine, and can even browse network drives, or do a netboot.

LinuxBios? What the hell is that?

[Kooldino]

I first heard about EFI 2 years ago...glad to see it's finally about to be released. Wombat points out the BEST feature of it...the whole generic driver thing. That's a Godsend.

[Ribbit]

Originally posted by Wombat
LinuxBios? What the hell is that?

http://www.linuxbios.org

Essentially, a project to replace the BIOS with a small custom Linux kernel. Looks like this is mainly intended for use in (diskless?) cluster nodes.