UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface)

A new model for the interface between personal-computer operating systems and platform firmware; the interface consists of data tables that contain platform-related information, plus boot and runtime service calls that are available to the operating system and its loader. Together, these provide a standard environment for booting an operating system and running pre-boot applications.

The replacement for BIOS on PCs and servers. An operating system in its own right, comparable in complexity to DOS.

Website | UEFI Specification

Shell Specification | Intel Shell Command Reference Manual | Intel Basic Instructions for Using the
Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI)

"How to Access the EFI Shell to carry out Systems Diagnostics or Updates": Turns out the shell can read USB-key drives and execute .EFI executable files--which is interesting in of itself--and this article describes how to boot into an Intel machine and use the UEFI shell to do that.

Programming for EFI: Building programs for the EFI environment.

Tags: platform   macos   linux   windows  

Last modified 01 July 2021