Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a standard that describes a new type of interface in detail. It is a standard firmware interface for computers and is intended to replace BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). The standard was created by more than 140 technology companies in the UEFI Alliance, including Microsoft. UEFI is designed to improve software interoperability and address BIOS limitations.

To learn more about UEFI, you have to start with BIOS. As we all know, every ordinary computer has a BIOS, which is used to load the most basic program code of the computer, responsible for initializing the hardware, detecting the hardware function and booting the operating system. UEFI is the concept opposite to BIOS. This interface is used to automatically load the operating system from the pre-boot operating environment to an operating system, so as to simplify the boot program and save time. Traditional BIOS technology is gradually being replaced by UEFI, and in recent new PCs, many have already used UEFI, and the use of UEFI mode to install operating systems is the trend.

What is the difference between UEFI and BIOS? What are the advantages?

As the successor to the traditional BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), UEFI has many features that its predecessors did not have, such as graphical interface, various operation modes, and allowing hardware drivers to be implanted. These features make UEFI easier to use, more versatile, and more convenient than traditional BIOS. Windows 8 announced full support for UEFI at the beginning of its release, which prompted many motherboard manufacturers to switch to UEFI as one of the standard configurations of motherboards.

UEFI eliminates the problem of traditional BIOS requiring long self-tests, making hardware initialization and boot systems simple and fast. In other words, UEFI has made the computer BIOS not like BIOS, but a small solidified operating system on the motherboard, plus UEFI's own development language has changed from assembly to C language, the addition of high-level languages makes it possible for manufacturers to develop UEFI in depth.

The following features about UEFI come from Microsoft's official website:

Improve security by protecting pre-boot or pre-boot processes against bootkit***.

2. Shorten startup time and recovery time from hibernation.

Supports drives with capacities greater than 2.2 TB.

Support for 64-bit modern firmware device drivers, which can be used by the system during boot to address more than 17.2 billion GB of memory.

UEFI hardware can be used in conjunction with BIOS.

The following differences between BIOS and UEFI come from the network:

UEFI is an upgrade alternative to BIOS. As for the comparison between BIOS and UEFI, if only from the perspective of system startup principle, UEFI is stronger than BIOS because UEFI itself is equivalent to a micro operating system, and its convenience lies in:

First, UEFI already has file system support, enabling it to read files directly from FAT partitions. What is a file system? Simply put, a file system is a way for an operating system to organize and manage files. To put it bluntly, it is to present the data on the hard disk to the user in the form of files. Fat32 and NTFS are common file system types.

Second, applications can be developed that run directly under UEFI, and these program files usually end with efi. Since UEFI can directly recognize files in FAT partitions, there are applications that can run directly in them. Then you can make the Windows installer an efi type application and put it in any fat partition to run directly, so that installing the Windows operating system, which used to look a little complicated, suddenly becomes very simple, just like opening a browser under Windows. In fact, that was exactly what happened.

Finally, remember that this is something that BIOS cannot do. Because before booting the operating system under BIOS, you must read the system boot code (contained in the master boot record) from the specified sector on the hard disk and boot the operating system from the active partition. The operation of sectors is far less intuitive than the operation of files in partitions, so in the BIOS boot installation of Windows operating system, we have to use some tools to configure the device to meet the boot requirements. Under UEFI, none of this is required, no master boot record is required, no active partition is required, no tools are required, just copy the installation files to a FAT32 (main) partition/USB drive, and then boot from this partition/USB drive. Installing Windows is as simple as that.

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