David Yin's Blog

Currently Viewing Posts Tagged UEFI

What is UEFI?

September 24, 2012
0 Comments

What is UEFI, I mentioned it at What is GPT, but not clear. Here I would like to give more details about it.
The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, UEFI, is a new firmware interface specification that is designed to replace the familiar BIOS interface.
When turn on the computer, UEFI’s firmware will run an inventory of the hardware installed on the system; after checking that everythinkg is functioning properly, it will launch the operation system and turn control of the PC hardware over to the software. UEFI supports a wider range of chip architectures, including 32-bit and 64-bit processors like the ARM chips, than does BIOS, which is limited to running on 16-bit processors.
The new spec works very well, and nearly all UEFI firmware images include support for older BIOS services, so it has no problem upgrading from a motherboard flashed with BIOS to one flashed with UEFI.

What is GPT

August 20, 2012
1 Comment

GPT stands for GUID Partition Table.
The widespread MBR partitioning scheme, dating from the early 1980s, imposed limitations which affect the use of modern hardware. Intel therefore developed a new partition-table format in the late 1990s as part of what eventually became UEFI. The GPT as of 2010 forms a subset of the UEFI specification.
To use GPT for partition, the system has to meet the following requirement.
Hardware:
New motherboard with UEFI support.
Software:
Linux has native support for it.
Windows 2008, Windows 7, only 64bit support it.

Continue reading “What is GPT”

  • Archives