Intel spoke of a lot of interesting things at IDF and one of them was EFI, extensible firmware interface. EFI was a relatively unknown technology until Apple launched its new Intel based Macs whose perhaps best protection against getting Windows runnning on them is the use of EFI. Instead for relying on a BIOS as today’s PC motherboards it has chosen to use EFI with the Intel Mac systems. EFI is in several ways a better foundation for a computer and Intel has now discussed moving towards to EFI for the PC market.
“According to Intel, the EFI specification allows far greater customizability than the BIOS. With current BIOSes, there are a lot of legacy devices that must be defined in order for the platform to work. Serial ports, legacy I/O such as PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, and other old legacy enumerated devices must be defined. This not only puts a toll on a system, it leaves potential hazards for system conflicts.”
A very interesting feature with EFI is that even if you switch motherboard you will be able to use the same Windows installation. If you change motherboard today, either to a newer model or even worse a board with a new chipset, it’s often alsmot impossible to get Windows to work without reinstalling it. This is basically since the BIOS is diffferent and have to mediate between the hardware and the operating system. EFI lets the operating system speak directly with the hardware and you can therefore switch EFI boards without concern.
Not everything is great with EFI and te most obvious being that only the operating system but also the hardware has to support the technology.
