Linked by Gregory on Sat 26th Feb 2011 16:51 UTC
"Intel is pleased to announce the BIOS Implementation Test Suite, a bootable pre-OS environment for testing BIOSes and in particular their initialization of Intel processors, hardware, and technologies. BITS can verify your BIOS against many Intel recommendations. In addition, BITS includes Intel's official reference code as provided to BIOS, which you can use to override your BIOS's hardware initialization with a known-good configuration, and then boot an OS."
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RE[2]: I hope this is what it looks like
by TheGZeus on Sat 26th Feb 2011 20:45
in reply to "RE: I hope this is what it looks like"
Member since:2010-05-19
RE[3]: I hope this is what it looks like
by pgeorgi on Sat 26th Feb 2011 21:56
in reply to "RE[2]: I hope this is what it looks like"
Member since:2010-02-18
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2005-07-24
It's a BIOS validation suite, essentially. It allows board makers & kernel/driver developers to communicate more efficiently by permitting kernel/driver developers access to standard hardware initialization code from Intel in lieu of whatever code is being used by the motherboard used for development.
This is really just a way to keep motherboard venders from straying from the Intel reference by too much, which has advantages for stability and disadvantages for some forms of innovation.
This won't be replacing the BIOS, but may prove useful in running certain OSes on motherboards with non-standard BIOS setups ( read: Haiku ), though that really depends on the overall flexibility of the test suite.
Interjecting custom code would prove useful for only a select few, namely those I've mentioned.
Not really a platform selling point, IMHO.
--The loon