BIOS is a Dead man walking

PC that’s still reminiscent of the PC’s primordial, text-based beginnings, but the familiarly-clunky BIOS could soon be on its deathbed, according to MSI. The motherboard maker says it’s now making a big shift towards point and click UEFI systems, and it’s all going to kick off at the end of this year.

The first new UEFI products will be based on Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipset, spanning the whole field from entry-level boards to high-end kit. The company says that it expects the boards to be introduced towards the end of this year, and into early 2011. The company says “We won’t consider UEFI as an expensive premium feature but as a must-have for everyone!”  UEFI (universal extensible firmware interface) is a continuation of Intel’s original EFI project, which was designed to replace the BIOS with a user-friendly point-and-click interface, as well as addressing many other troublesome areas of the PC’s legacy.

A UEFI system replaces the text-based BIOS with a user-friendly point and click system.  Also “UEFI doesn’t support every board; you have to use certain code with certain motherboards.”  Motherboard companies spend a lot of time developing their own features and technology that distinguish their motherboards from those of the competition. If these features are designed to interface with the code in a traditional BIOS, then they may not be able to communicate with a UEFI system.

The main difference between a traditional BIOS and UEFI is programming.  UEFI is written in C, rather than the assembly code used in a traditional BIOS.  However,  this means that there’s much more flexibility with the code.

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