The Basic I/O System hasn’t undergone a serious upgrade since the early days of personal computing, but the Framework—a solution fostered by Intel—provides a groundbreaking approach to this technology.

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Despite monumental advances in every area of computing, that new computer at your local retailer very likely contains a component that is a prime candidate for improvement: the BIOS. The Basic I/O System hasn’t undergone a serious upgrade since the early days of personal computing, and there are a number of areas where architecture enhancements can make a big difference for both consumers and developers. A groundbreaking program, the Intel® Platform Innovation Framework for Extensible Firmware Interface (sometimes referred to by the codename Tiano), offers an effective, widely supported means to advance the technology. Nicknamed the Framework, this implementation creates a new model for the interface between operating systems and platform

Within this interface, the platform data, bootstrap information, and runtime service calls form a standardized framework for loading the operating system and running applications during the pre-boot phase. The EFI version 1.10 specification was published by Intel and then contributed to the Unified EFI Forum, which will maintain and advance the specification in upcoming years. Garnering wide industry support—including the major BIOS manufacturers—the UEFI Forum members include AMD, American Megatrends, Dell, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Insyde, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Phoenix Technologies. Mike Richmond of the Intel Software and Solutions Group Core Software Division has been shepherding this project along for several years and the efforts are beginning to bear fruit as UEFI-compliant systems are now available and major companies are jumping on the bandwagon.

Typically, companies that want to innovate at a system level have avoided interfacing to the BIOS, since there have been many implementations, each a little different, risking compatibility problems. " Within the computer industry," Richmond commented, " applications grow when there are horizontal standards; when there aren’t, people just mostly ignore the situation. They spend their time and money elsewhere."

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