What is UEFI? Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, also known as Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, is a specification for an embedded software interface that connects hardware peripheral with the operating system (OS). Like BIOS, UEFI is usually installed at the time of manufacture and is the very first program that executes when booting up a computing device.
The goal of the Extended Display Port specification is to provide a way to connect a projector to a host computer while viewing a non-volatile memory device. The term “Universal Serial Bus” or “USB” is sometimes used to describe the interfaces defined in this specification. In computer terms, however, the term Universal Serial Bus is used to refer to a group of USB devices that are connected via Universal Serial Bus, a high-speed data bus that provides connectivity over long distances.
A uefi system is an embedded system that executes on a specific computer platform, such as a laptop. In the past, a Universal Serial Bus system had to be connected through a host operating system, which dictated many of the design characteristics of the interface. For example, a specific peripheral type (such as a digital camera) would have to be supported by the host OS. The uefi spec changed this by allowing any uefi enabled device to communicate with any OS.
Because of this flexibility, uefi technology has quickly taken off and is now a popular component of many operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Sun Microsystems, and many others. A typical uefi boot environment includes one or more pre-installed extensions of the standard Linux kernel, as well as additional software components. These software components are part of the “uboot” software stack which provides the functionality necessary to execute uefi boot commands. As a result, the uefi boot environment can be thought of as a very portable, dynamic booting mechanism for a very low-level hardware environment.
Because uefi is written as an embedded script or firmware, it is able to execute in a non-interruptible manner. This means that once the computer boots up, the uefi boot loader can continue running as non-responsive until a user manually restarts it. Users may do this by pressing a button, pulling up the boot menu, or rebooting the computer. Because the firmware is written to be executed when the computer is switched on, the execution will not block until the user requests it. This means that even machines without a running Windows OS can boot up into a uefi-enabled boot loader.
However, what is uefi if the computer is without a functioning Windows OS? The answer is quite simple: the uefi protocol can be implemented as a stand-alone driver. A UEFI driver is a flash-based device driver that is loaded into memory before any other drivers, and then executes any task associated with a particular UEFI enabled device. Because uefi drivers have no need for an OS, they are extremely useful for debugging OS crashes, debugging BIOS-related issues, and for testing and debugging security related issues.
In addition to having no need for an OS, uefi also has the advantage of being fully configurable. A user can create a number of boot loaders, all of which may execute different uefi commands. The most popular, and least versatile, of these boot loaders is the boot promiser. A boot promiser allows users to select from a number of different promiser commands. These commands are typically designed to load different firmware images, load special hardware devices such as memory sticks or flash drives, or execute kernel tasks.
Many manufacturers implement their own firmware interface in addition to using a UEFI/EFI interface. In some cases, these manufacturers’ firmware interfaces may conflict with uefi’s, making it necessary for the two to be coupled. Sometimes, however, these conflicts occur because there is actually no way to communicate between the two firmware interfaces. In this case, one firmware interface will usually suffice.
For example, Microsoft has implemented a uefi/efi-booting software interface that works well with their Xbox gaming console. This software allows the Xbox to boot up faster and perform better on a variety of Microsoft games, as well as many other software products. The use of a UEFI-booting software product will allow you to avoid any possible conflicts with other software on your machine. Alternatively, you can employ a custom UEFI firmware interface if there are problems with communication between the two.
