Unified EFI Update Tony Pierce President United EFI Forum 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 Site is currently UNDER CONSTUCTION Expected to be live by end of April For current questions 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 AMD Fellow Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Brian Richardson Technical Evangelist 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 for updated informationwww.AMD.com Engage with the UEFI Forum and help evolve the industry

Community Resources Windows Hardware & Driver Central (WHDC) Technical Communities Non-Microsoft Community Sites Microsoft Public Newsgroups Technical Chats and Webcasts Microsoft Blogs

Additional Resources uefi.org Web Resources: Specs: