Firmware Changes in Progress

Michael analyzed and wrote about Microsoft's operating systems, including the Windows client OS, as well as compliance and governance. Michael... more

Although firmware, such as the commonly used basic input/output system (BIOS), plays a key role in booting or starting a computer, BIOS, which dates back to before MS-DOS, has several limitations that are impacting the new generation of computers with high-powered processors. The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is gradually gaining ground to address these limitations.

BIOS Limits Drivers, Disk, Peripherals

Since its design, BIOS has been tightly dependent on the Intel x86 processor architecture. Therefore, it still relies on the x86 processor’s 16-bit “real mode” operation, and the initial device drivers needed to boot the OS must be 16-bit. During the initial phase of the BIOS-based boot process, only 64KB of memory are addressable.

A second limitation is also due to BIOS’s 16-bit legacy: it relies on the Master Boot Record (MBR) disk partitioning scheme, which uses 32-bit values to describe the offset and length of a partition—meaning there are a maximum of four primary partitions and a maximum disk size of roughly 2 terabytes (TB).

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