A thought-provoking ZDNet editorial talks about Intel’s plans to bring the BIOS into the 21st century by making it more sophisticated and operating system-like. That will bring some welcome benefits to the PC world, but there are lurking dangers. The real birth of the PC platform was not IBM’s invention of the PC or the release of the IBM PC Technical Reference Manual, but what rather Compaq’s clean room rewrite of the PC BIOS. While IBM maintained proprietary control over the BIOS, it still had a stranglehold over the platform. Now, Intel wants to push through a new BIOS, and it’s unlilkey that anyone will be able to pull off the clean room stunt again. Intel will own the PC platform going forward, even more than it already does.
beside the fact that it was made by sun any reasons why the IA-32 and IA-64 could not use such a beast ?
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http://homepage.mac.com/softkid
Nope, there’s no reason they couldn’t. OF is ONE SWEET thing. I’d love to see them use it. It could potentially make drivers a thing of the past.
You can bet if apple ever goes x86, they’ll be using OF on their boxes.
i wonder if the guy has ever actually taken a look at efi or whether he just read an “overview” and jumped to conclusions?
I’ve seen the new ELI loader in Intel’s Itanium and some X86 platforms. It’s far superior to the older BIOS setup and more flexible.
As long as this thing is flashable, I’m not too worried. Back in the day, you could buy an aftermarket flash BIOS for a PC, or if you were really daring, flash a different BIOS image over your current BIOS (like, make your Phoenix BIOS an Award). I’d be surprised it GNU or someone didn’t come up with Open Flash Images to duplicate this type of think.
And think how nice it’d be to have GRUB in the firmware instead of having to make a little partition for it…
Some work to make a bios is already underway; On the few supported motherboards linuxbios can boot Windows 2000 and Linux, in-fact they have been able to boot Linux in around 3 seconds.
http://www.openbios.info/
http://www.linuxbios.org/index.html
<BLOCKQUOTE>It knows just enough to load more of itself from disk, talk over the network and handle basic files. It also has a small interpreter that can run programs originally written in C–or whatever–and compiled to byte code, like Java. People who need to write BIOS-type programs can now write proper software, turn them into byte code and know that they’ll run on any EFI system.</BLOCKQUOTE>
Anybody else thinking of the possibilities here for OS-hacker types? 🙂 Current BIOSes can load a boot sector, which can contain your own code. It sounds as if this new EFI “BIOS” can load a lot more than just a boot sector, AND this code can be written in a byte code that is guaranteed to run on a wide variety of computers. (Of course, it’s also possible that IBM might require you to pay some money and sign a non-disclosure agreement before they’d let you in on the technical details, which would be a bummer.)
Hey,
Go take a look at LinuxBIOS (http://www.linuxbios.org/index.html). The motherboard manufacturers need to get together and support an open-source BIOS with the tremendous flexability that LinuxBIOS has so that they and the market place are not at the mercy of big corporations and their proprietary BIOS.
http://www.elegent.com/products/index.htm
The main reason LinuxBIOS and FREEBIOS’s will fail is due to the NDA’s. I wish them the best of luck and FOAM AT THE MOUTH THINKING ABOUT TOTALLY OPEN BIOSES!!!
I would love CPU multiplier control on my A7M266-D.
personally, i like OpenBoot on those Sun machines.
but actually, i know only PC BIOS and Sun OpenBoot
so may be it’s unfair
what about Mac? does Mac has BIOS?
Uses openfirmware, I believe.
“what about Mac? does Mac has BIOS?”
Yes it does, but it is far more advanced. That is one of the reasons why MACS “just work”. The bios in PC’s SUCK, so do hardware IRQ’s. IF they updated those two things, PC’s would have the same quality and shine as a mac. Funny thing is, that MACS have more IBM parts then a PC “clone” these days!
DAN
The “Open Firmware” is used on all major platforms including Apple. Sun’s implementation is by far the coolest (on the Enterprise level machines). It has facilities (obdiag) to test every single component in the system.
It’s so freaking cool when the enviormental control systems is being put through it’s paces and every single fan in the box is going balls-out. Sounds like a jet…
the x86 platform sucks shit…
What does SGI use, BTW? Unlike any OF solution I’ve seen, it looks graphical. That’s my main problem with OF; it’s purely command-line.
Another noteworthy project is U-boot, formerly known as PPCboot (but not restricted to PPC).
Why do we need another non standard bytecode for I/O card device drivers. We currently have Intel’s x86 and OpenFirmware’s Fcode. EFI adds yet another variant for hardware vendors to support. I don’t expect that we are going to have a huge uptake of EFI, primarily because of Intel’s conttrol over it.
CodeGen currently has OpenFirmware up and running the Athlon64 and plans to support system vendors building machines based upon the Athlon64 and Opteron.
I believe it’s a mini-root, and you have to hold your tongue juuuuust right to rebuild it.
SGI uses open boot also. There is a way to get to a command prompt. Can’t remember how though.
Sgi uses a PROM that runs the ARC loader. Microsoft owns some of the IP for this which is likely why Intel is rolling their own.
The SGI PROM boots, sets the mode of the MIPS CPU, or Intel in the case of the 320 and 540 series. MIPS can run big endian or little endian, the system chooses at boot.
This PROM, then offers the graphical interface to the machine. Really the entire thing is command line though with the GUI driving on machines with graphics. On non graphical machines, you get command line via serial port.
PROM is network aware and filesystem aware to a nice degree. It is possible to install initial software via network, local disk or tape, or some combination. PROM also maintains a number of environment variables that can be visible to the OS. These variables control many little things about the machine depending on its type. These variables can also be changed by the OS. Since the system is Programmable, the PROM can be flashed to prepare the system for newer hardware in advance of the user actually needing it. This process happens automatically as the OS is upgraded.
The command prompt really can only do a few things. It can be used to boot the machine, examine files on disks, set environment variables and such. It can run very simple programs that in turn load the OS. Sash is one of these AKA Stand Alone Shell.
The miniroot is a different thing. IRIX systems have a swap partition (always). When you ask PROM to load system software, it loads a mini IRIX system into the swap partition. This system then mounts filesystems and inits the devices needed to work at this level.
Miniroot is followed by inst which is the SGI software loader. It can format disks, provide a shell for administration and editing of existing systems. Inst also will load software and resolve dependancies to a very high level. Couple of things that are possible.
1. Take disk from one vintage SGI and install in another. Inst can examine the filesystem and replace those bits that are hardware dependant without destroying the configuration. Build on Indy, boot on Octane if you want.
2. When building a new root filesystem it is possible to load every piece of SGI software and choose before doing anything what is to remain and what will be added and resolve all conflicts up front. When the OS is loaded, it will work every time.
3. Lets say you are in the middle of installation and lose power. Since the state of the current miniroot / inst session is maintained you can choose to either ignore the last state and start again, or continue where you left off. (very cool)
These things combined allow one to keep one filesystem running for a very long time across hardware types even.
Anyone seriously building a machine level environment would learn a lot from SGI.
I have my worries about this as well.
The PC industry is down for the count. A smart system environment could easily be used to limit peoples options. The fewer options we have, in a market like this, the easier it is for those in control to make money.
There are too many players right now for anyone to make the big bucks on hardware. (Which is just the way it needs to stay.)
A dumb bios lets anyone run anything they want. Moving the choke point to the hardware makes the PC a lot more like the consoles. With current US law headed the way it is, this does not speak well for those of us who want to do what we want with our hardware.
I fear the freedom we get will be tied to the money spent and not what is in our best interests.
I would hate to buy a new machine, then get a damn mod chip to run Linux!
Open Firmware is processor and system independent boot firmware. I believe Apple and Sun are using this why not for x86 also? I like to be able to boot what ever OS I want on whatever platform I want without someone having monopoly control. I want to be able to boot Linux, BSD, (Windows on x86) , BeOS, Solaris, SkyOS, (Mac OS X on Apple), or whatever I want without Intel, MS, or someone else controlling my choices. Forget IBM PC-BIOS, EFI, or linuxbios, GIVE ME OPEN FIRMWARE!!!!
Be Open And Free (as in Freedom…)
maybe pc-users like you, are the reason there are mac-users like him. you just sound ignorant. next time you’re surfing web-tv on your AOL account and feel the need to comment, don’t. remind yourself that your brain is only *just* supplying enough oxygen to your brain to type, not to think.
mac isn’t dead, intel clearly does not get what it wants, it once had complete control over x86 but AMD and various other CPU manufacturers are a testament that intel are by no means infallible.
anyway, SOMETHING needs to be done about the current state of CMOS… booting from hard drives is far too slow and error prone, instant-on computers are the way forward. I can just guess in the future one of the major factors in buying a motherboard will be how much onboard solid-state memory it has… heh.
and nobody should worry too much about proprietary code blocking the ability to install the OS of your choice. There are ALWAYS people out there willing to supply a demand, and if there’s a demand for open-source bios, it WILL happen.