Evolution of Role of BIOS

by

Roberto Bell

Older PC operating systems, which were developed for 16-bit CPUs, such as MS-DOS, relied on the BIOS to carry out most input/output tasks within the PC. A variety of technical reasons eventually made it inefficient for more recent operating systems written for 32-bit CPUs such as Linux and Microsoft Windows to invoke the BIOS directly. Larger, more powerful, servers and workstations using PowerPC or SPARC CPUs by several manufacturers developed a platform-independent Open Firmware (IEEE-1275), based on the Forth programming language. It is included with Sun’s SPARC computers, IBM’s RS/6000 line, and other PowerPC CHRP motherboards. Later x86-based personal computer operating systems, like Windows NT, use their own, better-performing, native drivers and also made it much easier to extend support to new hardware, while BIOS still relies on a legacy 16-bit runtime interface. As such, the BIOS was relegated to bootstrapping, at which point the operating system’s own drivers could take control of the hardware.

There are same transitions for the Apple Macintosh, where the system software depends on the Tool Box”that includes a set of drivers and other valuable routines collected in ROM depending on Motorolas 680×0 CPUs. These Apple ROMs were superseded by Open Firmware in the powerPC Macintosh, then EFI in the Intel Macintosh computers. There were a similar transitions for the Apple Macintosh, where the system software originally relied heavily on the ToolBox”a set of drivers and other useful routines stored in ROM based on Motorola’s 680×0 CPUs. These Apple ROMs were replaced by Open Firmware in the PowerPC Macintosh, then EFI in Intel Macintosh computers.

BIOS is loaded with intricate functionalities such as ACPI. These functions cover power management, hot swapping with the inclusion of thermal management. However, BIOS limitations that cover 16bit processor mode with the availabilty of 1MB addressable space and PC AT hardware dependencies and so on are considered to be inaccessible for the previous computer platforms. Extensible Firmware Interface is a part which make the replacement of the runtime connectivity of the legacy BIOS

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Evolution of Role of BIOS

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