Keeping Technical Professionals Up-To-Date  

PC Firmware

With Windows^® 8 Microsoft is pushing for big changes to the firmware architecture. The standard, native 64-bit, version will only run on systems that expose the UEFI (Class 2 and Class 3). The 32-bit version will still run on Class 0 (Legacy BIOS) and Class 1 (UEFI systems with hard-coded CSM) systems, but will not have all the security features of the 64-bit version.

In addition, for vendors to get their systems Windows 8 certified, they have to implement Secure Boot, and ship Windows 8 machines with it enabled. Secure Boot establishes a "chain-of-trust" from the boot vector to the hand-off to the OS boot loader.

The chain-of-trust is maintained through entries in "white-list" and "black-list" databases that determine what is and what isn't allowed to run. There is concern in the open source community about this capability, and some questions have to be resolved: Who will sign the open source modules? Who will manage the keys to the databases, ensuring competing vendors don't shut each other out?

The Courses

These courses are designed for technical managers, engineers and high-level technicians who need up-to-date knowledge about x86-64, ARM or Itanium system's initialization and boot-loader hand-off.

If you are designing, developing, testing, or validating hardware, firmware, or software platforms, ACPI, PCI, or firmware based expansion ROM capabilities that interact with firmware, these courses are for you!

Note: These courses can be augmented with modules covering related technologies like ACPI, SMBIOS, SMBus, and/or USB enumeration.

UEFI Platform Initialization and Architecture
2-day Demo-Intensive Course
All systems shipping with a desktop version of Windows 8 implement and expose the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) boot firmware and have Secure Boot activated.

This impacts you, whether you run Windows or not: Depending on the policies implemented by the OEM, you may have difficulty installing the OS of your choice, even if it is UEFI based.

Most implementations of UEFI follow the highly flexible and modular open architecture defined by the UEFI Forum's PI (Platform Initialization) Specification, based on Intel's Platform Innovation Framework for EFI, better known by its code name – Tiano. UEFI and Tiano provide developers with powerful tools for integrating new features on a platform, and test- and validation-engineers with equally powerful capabilities to do their jobs.

This course walks you through PI/Tiano's seven phases and explains how modules are discovered and dependencies are resolved as system hardware is initialized. Secure Boot, the UEFI compliant interface, CSM - the Legacy BIOS compatibility module, the pre-OS execution environment, and the hand-off to an operating system boot loader are all covered in detail. Click here for the detailed course outline.

BIOS Essentials
2-day Demo-Intensive Course
This course focuses on the x86 PC’s traditional firmware design – Legacy BIOS and its POST (Power-On Self Test) sequence. Using actual BIOS code sequences it shows how built-in controllers are initialized, how PCI devices and functions are discovered and configured, how expansion ROMs are detected, validated and executed. The course also describes the various data tables that are created and populated during POST.

If you design, develop, test, or validate hardware or software platforms, ACPI, PCI, or firmware based expansion ROM capabilities that interact with Legacy BIOS, this course is for you!

In addition to the traditional BIOS and POST sequences the course also gives a quick overview of UEFI, the next generation firmware architecture. Click here for the detailed course outline.

Courses  |  Schedule a Course  |  About Us  |  Contact Us  |  Home

Copyright © 2005-2013, Techstream Inc. All rights reserved