The Open Source BIOS is Ten
The firmware used to start up the hardware and load the operating system, the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), is fundamental to the operation of a PC. It can be one of the major contributors to boot time on a PC. Most PCs use a commercial, proprietary BIOS, but steadily, open source firmware is making a place for itself. coreboot, previously known as LinuxBIOS, is one of the leading BIOS projects and is celebrating its ten year anniversary. Anton Borisov, who has researched the economics of open source firmware, talked to the developers behind the coreboot BIOS; Ron Minnich, who deals with largest supercomputers in the world at Sandia National Labs in California, Stefan Reinauer - CEO of coreSystems and Eric Biederman from Linux Networx.
Anoton Borisov: My first question is about the idea of LinuxBIOS. Who was the originator of it and why was LinuxBIOS created?
Ron Minnich: I came up with the idea in 1999. I had been building PC clusters since 1994 and workstation clusters before that. In every case, the BIOS was always a stumbling block, requiring provision of keyboard/video/mouse or a KVM switch for every node – or, in the case of some vendors even today, a network KVM adapter. What I wanted was a BIOS that would come up with the node in a network controlled state – i.e. a network console as the native console mode. We wanted to get a cluster that would boot in less than 5 minutes and not hang with "press F1 to continue" – this is still a problem today!
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
- 1591 reads
- PDF version
More in Tux Machines
- Highlights
- Front Page
- Latest Headlines
- Archive
- Recent comments
- All-Time Popular Stories
- Hot Topics
- New Members
digiKam 7.7.0 is releasedAfter three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. |
Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand
|
Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future TechThe metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. |
today's howtos
|
Recent comments
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago