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Framework Overview Part 2

Intel's intent in producing the framework is to enable Intel, BIOS vendors, OS vendors, competitive silicon suppliers, and OEMs to move compatibly beyond the strictures of conventional BIOS implementation. Intel believes that the framework will improve development and deployment of new silicon and platform features into the industry. Intel expects that the framework will be Intel's primary vehicle for enabling firmware for new Intel® silicon in the 2007-2008 timeframe. Conventional BIOS enabling will proceed in parallel during the transition to the framework and for some time after that transition. Intel's systems and silicon product divisions began offering selected SKUs of customer reference boards, motherboards, and systems based on the framework, with the support of participating vendors, in 2003. The first example of a complete end-user PC that was sold by a major OEM incorporating the framework was released in the second half of 2003. During 2005, more than one million systems shipped with the framework.

Sometime during the forecast transition to the framework, we expect OS vendors to offer versions of their products that support OS setup and boot using the EFI specification. Such support is already standard for Itanium® processor family OSs, because EFI is an architectural requirement for the Intel® Itanium® processor family. While EFI support in the OS is not required for the IA-32 Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and EM64T implementation of the framework to be useful (see the description of the IA-32 Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) CSM, below), OSs can exploit EFI, which in the framework's implementation can support a better boot and setup experience for end users.

The framework is the result of more than six years of architecture, development, and testing work from silicon, systems and BIOS engineering teams representing all segments of Intel's business.

The framework is best understood as modern software engineering applied to the problem of platform firmware. The major tenets of the framework include the following:

  • Modularity extending from the first code executed at power-on up through the EFI Driver Model
  • Robust architectural interfaces, implemented in C
  • Flexible packaging of firmware images
  • Protected-mode memory and address space management tailored to the unique needs of preboot environments
  • Automatic ordering of driver execution based on their self-described dependencies
  • Optional services available as EFI drivers and preboot applications to enable efficient manufacturing test automation and platform management

As outlined below, the level of services provided by the framework is tailored to the problems that platform firmware is intended to address. The framework is not intended to be an operating system.

Intel has supported and promoted the use of high-level languages for embedded microprocessor software development since the mid-1970s. The framework brings support for C-based development to one of the last bastions of assembly language coding. The framework is built using modern, commercially available compilers and includes an infrastructure for source-level debug of EFI drivers on a PC running Microsoft Windows XP*. Optional incorporation of a hardware debugger allows SourceCodeAware* debug at a very low level. The long-recognized benefits of high level language coding vs. assembly language are realized by a very "tight" implementation that is aware of the constraints of limited platform flash sizes but that can expand to include drivers that are loaded from disk, from a USB drive, over the network, or even via wireless.

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