Unified EFI Update

Tony Pierce
President
United EFI Forum
tonypi @ microsoft.com
Session Outline
Unified EFI Forum
Who we are
What we do
How to get involved
AMD on the future of firmware
AMD’s view
AMD’s requirements
AMD’s plans
Session Goals
Attendees should leave this session with
the following:
An understanding of the Unified EFI Forum
Knowledge about the current specification work of
the Forum
How and where to engage with the UEFI Forum
An insight into AMD’s view of future firmware
The Unified EFI Forum
Purpose
Development of the Unified Extensible Firmware
Interface (UEFI) Specification
Worldwide adoption and promotion of
UEFI specifications
Enable members and other implementers to bring the
technology into a variety of computing platforms and
operating systems
UEFI Test Suite
The UEFI Specification
Interface specification between Operating
System and Platform Firmware
Provides architecture independent mechanism
for add-in card initialization
Provides a standard environment for booting an
operating system and running
pre-boot applications
Interfaces replace all current legacy BIOS
boot interfaces
Relationship Between UEFI and EFI
UEFI Specification
EFI 1.10 specification contributed to the Forum by Intel
and Microsoft to be used as a starting draft
Forum will evolve, extend, and add any new
functionality required to produce UEFI 1.0 specification
All licensing for UEFI 1.0 specification will come from
UEFI Forum
EFI 1.10 Specification
Intel holds copyright
Licensed directly from Intel
No future EFI specifications
Organizational Structure
Membership Classifications
Promoters
Advanced Micro Devices, American Megatrends, Inc., Dell Inc.,
Hewlett-Packard Company, Intel Corporation, International
Business Machines Corporation, Insyde Software Corporation
Microsoft Corporation, and Phoenix Technologies
Contributors
Your name belongs here
Contributor Privileges
Review and Contribute to all Draft Specifications
Opportunity to participate in Work Groups

Adopter
License agreement with the Forum
How do I Become a Member of UEFI
All agreements and process will be posted
on www.UEFI.org
Site is currently UNDER CONSTUCTION
Expected to be live by end of April
For current questions email admin @ uefi.org
Call To Action
Evaluate UEFI for your Windows
codenamed “Longhorn” product plans
Participate in the development of UEFI
specifications and test
Adopt UEFI as your long term firmware to
operating system interface
AMD and the Future of Firmware

Richard A. Brunner Brian Richardson

AMD Fellow Technical Evangelist
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. America Megatrends, Inc.
AMD’s View on the Future of Firmware
The industry is reaching a key transition point in
the next few years.
Legacy “16-bit” BIOS is reaching the end of its
flexibility in dealing with new technologies
In the next 5 years it will go from maturity to senility
Significant BIOS work for each new piece of silicon
Interface is per-BIOS “spaghetti” code, not modular
Cryptic assembly, difficult to patch after-the-fact, fragile
AMD’s View on the Future of Firmware (con’t)

The flexibility of new firmware models will begin

to become a requirement for AMD’s customers
Server OEMS and customers want a modular interface
that allows them to innovate w/o re-engineering the
entire BIOS.
AMD and our Silicon partners can benefit from a new
model’s modular, well-defined interface and modern
runtime environment
Can write and release modules to end users directly
Well defined interface of a new model makes write-
once or (write-less-often) and patching workable for
multiple BIOSes
Many benefits to modern, testable runtime environment
AMD Future Firmware Requirements
Allows customers an evolutionary transition (not
a revolutionary upset) that:
Continues to support Legacy OSs and devices that
require 16-bit Legacy BIOS services
Legacy “16-bit” BIOS will still matter for years!
Allows OEMs to introduce the new Firmware model into
Market Segments as customer demand dictates
Operating-System-to-Firmware interface that:
Comprehends new hardware technologies, exotic boot
devices, and immense storage devices
Provides a more standardized, modular, non-thunking
interface to advanced OSs like Windows Longhorn.
Is verified by standardized test suites
AMD Future Firmware Requirements (con’t)
Chipset-to-Firmware (silicon) interface that:
Is modular, processor and chipset vendor-neutral
Is well-defined module environment and interface
Is verified by standardized test suites
New interface for modern components & buses only
Legacy components, like VGA, will always need “wrappers”
Modern firmware environment that:
Allows direct addressability of all memory without hacks
(uses 32-bit and/or 64-bit pointers)
Allows firmware to use higher-level procedure calls,
stacks, etc.
Allows Firmware driver development and testing on top
of a Modern OS, not underneath it
Enter Unified Extended Firmware Interface
AMD is happy to be a founding member of the
Unified EFI Forum (UEFI)
UEFI should meet many of AMD’s future
Firmware requirements
UEFI looks on its way to re-vamping the ancient, fragile
OS-to-Firmware Interface
UEFI has right mix of OEMs, CPU vendors, and OS
vendors to be effective
UEFI doesn’t yet solve modularity requirements
for the Chipset-to-Firmware Interface
AMD and other Industry players are discussing how to
drive a standard in this area. More to come…
Strength in Numbers
UEFI is a Firmware Interface Specification,
not a Firmware Implementation
Intel’s Platform Framework is one of several
UEFI implementations
Each vendor will innovate in the underlying firmware
implementations and make design trade-offs that best
fit their customers and markets
The success of UEFI as a true standard will come
from its ability to support multiple independent
implementations
The UEFI forum, specifications, and test suites are
crucial to making this work
Multiple implementations, if coordinated and embraced
wisely by the forum, can strengthen the UEFI standard
Strength in Numbers (con’t)
AMD is working with BIOS vendors on
independent UEFI Implementations
These Implementations support the UEFI stack on
AMD Athlon 64™ and AMD Opteron™ processors
These Implementations pass all available UEFI
OS-to-Firmware Test Suites.
These Implementations will boot Windows Longhorn
Come by the AMD booth to see Demos of
these implementations
American Megatrends, Inc. (AMI) Demo
AMI has been working with AMD on an
independent UEFI Implementation for
AMD Processors.
This implementation is independent, “clean-room”
Framework and Foundation Code
This effort demonstrates that UEFI can be a true,
vendor-neutral standard
Demo:
We will show the AMI UEFI Firmware booting Microsoft
Windows® for x64 Systems on a 2-Processor/4-core
AMD Opteron™ processor-based system.
Call To Action
Talk to us about your firmware plans
and requirements
Stay engaged and watch www.AMD.com for
updated information
Engage with the UEFI Forum and help evolve
the industry
Community Resources
Windows Hardware & Driver Central (WHDC)
www.microsoft.com/whdc/default.mspx
Technical Communities
www.microsoft.com/communities/products/default.mspx
Non-Microsoft Community Sites
www.microsoft.com/communities/related/default.mspx
Microsoft Public Newsgroups
www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups
Technical Chats and Webcasts
www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/default.mspx
www.microsoft.com/webcasts
Microsoft Blogs
www.microsoft.com/communities/blogs
Additional Resources
admin @ uefi.org
Web Resources:
Specs: http://www.uefi.org