4 ms·

> and finally your very safe and secure OS running. That's the one running on the Intel Management Engine, right? Or at least Intel would like to believe that'

> and finally your very safe and secure OS running. That's the one running on the Intel Management Engine, right? Or at least Intel would like to believe that's the case. Jokes aside, I may be missing something. The BIOS came way before UEFI did. What am I missing here?

WaitWaitWha 5y ago
UEFI did not replace the BIOS. You must have an onboard storage (usually a EEPROM)that loads all the UEFI. To load the UEFI, it still needs to know about devices and such, so that onboard thing albeit we no longer allowed to call BIOS, is... the BIOS. It is the 0 stage loader, or pre-loader, or pre-UEFI boot loader; just do not call it BIOS because it hurt feelings. So what is being sold is: old way is BIOS --> MBR --> Boot loader --> Kernel --> OS new way is UEFI --> Boot loader --> Kernel --> OS Reality is for new way: Non-BIOS BIOS --> UEFI --> Boot loader --> Kernel --> OS Something has to start reach and load the UEFI written on a 'boot media' (and we cannot forget about backward compatibility and fallback). Call it whatever you want, but it provides basic input, and output system to reach the media which stores the UEFI code. Put it in an other way, UEFI is (supposed to be) nothing more than just a set of easily updatable libraries of drivers and tooling to update the drivers; all in the background for your convenience. The old fashioned BIOS was not expanded to be storing all the various new fangled stuff we attach to machines, and the drivers update 'so fast' you would be flashing them almost every month.
- mjg59 5y ago
  > Something has to start reach and load the UEFI written on a 'boot media' No. The UEFI stack lives entirely in flash, the same as BIOS did.
  - WaitWaitWha 5y ago
    In my experience, it may be on a detachable flash media, but it is not entirely in flash on the motherboard. That would be counter to 'expandability' concept of UEFI. I have never seen so much flash memory directly on the mobo to support UEFI.
    - mjg59 5y ago
      Can you point at a machine like this? Literally every machine I've worked with has UEFI entirely implemented in motherboard flash.
      - WaitWaitWha 5y ago
        I think we are talking (writing) past each other. What is the purpose of your EFI System Partition in your opinion? That is all I was referring to in the above notes.
        mjg59 5y ago
        It contains bootloaders.

WaitWaitWha 5y ago

UEFI did not replace the BIOS. You must have an onboard storage (usually a EEPROM)that loads all the UEFI. To load the UEFI, it still needs to know about devices and such, so that onboard thing albeit we no longer allowed to call BIOS, is... the BIOS. It is the 0 stage loader, or pre-loader, or pre-UEFI boot loader; just do not call it BIOS because it hurt feelings. So what is being sold is: old way is BIOS --> MBR --> Boot loader --> Kernel --> OS new way is UEFI --> Boot loader --> Kernel --> OS Reality is for new way: Non-BIOS BIOS --> UEFI --> Boot loader --> Kernel --> OS Something has to start reach and load the UEFI written on a 'boot media' (and we cannot forget about backward compatibility and fallback). Call it whatever you want, but it provides basic input, and output system to reach the media which stores the UEFI code. Put it in an other way, UEFI is (supposed to be) nothing more than just a set of easily updatable libraries of drivers and tooling to update the drivers; all in the background for your convenience. The old fashioned BIOS was not expanded to be storing all the various new fangled stuff we attach to machines, and the drivers update 'so fast' you would be flashing them almost every month.

mjg59 5y ago
> Something has to start reach and load the UEFI written on a 'boot media' No. The UEFI stack lives entirely in flash, the same as BIOS did.
- WaitWaitWha 5y ago
  In my experience, it may be on a detachable flash media, but it is not entirely in flash on the motherboard. That would be counter to 'expandability' concept of UEFI. I have never seen so much flash memory directly on the mobo to support UEFI.
  - mjg59 5y ago
    Can you point at a machine like this? Literally every machine I've worked with has UEFI entirely implemented in motherboard flash.
    - WaitWaitWha 5y ago
      I think we are talking (writing) past each other. What is the purpose of your EFI System Partition in your opinion? That is all I was referring to in the above notes.
      - mjg59 5y ago
        It contains bootloaders.