After the periphery of the BIOS and the needs of the current hardware, a new system was born that had the task of unifying a large number of systems into one. The new hardware steps accelerated the process and with it, after the agreement of the big manufacturers, what we now commonly know as UEFI was born , but what is it really?
Although few know it, UEFI was created and defined through another specification that Intel generated at first and from which it takes its name, where after certain changes and corrections the final version was brought to life. So let’s get to know it more deeply to be clear about where it comes from and where it is going.
UEFI, the specification that changed to motherboards
The history of UEFI, as we say, comes from Intel and its EFI 1.10 specification, where the blue giant still has the copyright, curiously. Still, UEFI was developed from EFI and is an acronym for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, translated Unified Extensible Firmware Interface.
This specification leaves behind traditional BIOSes and defines a new model for the interface between operating systems between the PC and the platform firmware. The interface itself consists of a series of data tables, which contain a lot of information about the platform, along with startup services, runtime and other equally important tasks.
Ultimately, it forms a standard environment for booting an operating system and running certain pre-boot software. But apart from this, what advantages does it provide to a motherboard and platform? Quite a lot really, especially when you consider the years and capabilities that old BIOSes had.
Features and improvements that UEFI brings to a PC
This new interface has benefits that delve not only in PC, but in servers or any system that carries it. It can carry different interfaces in the same firmware, it supports a more secure system from the first moment, it makes boot times much faster and with this it manages to load the OS faster, it takes less time to create and it can also be done modular and above all, it is extensible.
As if this were not enough, UEFI offers independence from the micro-code of the CPU, allows to load larger storage units, supports the GPT partition table with up to 128 partitions and finally is capable of offering compatibility and emulating old BIOS for OS which are only compatible with it for technical reasons.
Currently all operating systems of a certain weight are compatible with UEFI, including many owners such as HP-UX or Apple‘s MacOS , which has accelerated their implementation by manufacturers, to the point where today it is difficult for any offer a device with BIOS instead of UEFI .
Since its implementation and launch, it has had a series of quite important improvements, such as encryption, network authentication or the different graphical interfaces that each manufacturer incorporates. The last specification enabled is 2.8 released in March 2019 and where there is normally a new revision every year and a half or two years, so it is possible that until 2021 we will not see an improvement in it.