UEFI Forum Promotes Industry Adoption of Extensible Firmware with New Specifications, Interoperability Events and the Formation of Its Industry Communications Working Group.

These Latest UEFI Forum Developments Highlight the Fast-Growing, Industry-Wide Acceptance of UEFI's Modern Methods for Booting an Operating System and Managing Pre-Boot Applications

BEAVERTON, Ore. -- The Unified EFI Forum, a non-profit collaborative specification organization formed to define, promote and manage the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) standard, announces progress on adoption of interface standards, successful interoperability testing and the formation of a new Working Group. As an evolving standard, the UEFI specification is driven by contributions and support from member companies of the UEFI Forum.

Today the Forum announced it has published two specifications: UEFI v2.1 and the PI (Platform Initialization specification) v1.0. The UEFI specification is intended to define interfaces between system firmware and operating systems or other high-level software. The PI specification is intended to promote interoperability between firmware components provided by different entities, such as silicon vendors, firmware (BIOS) developers and organizations that maintain firmware code bases.

In addition to the specifications, the UEFI Test Working Group (UTWG) has recently held two successful plugfests, which have been well attended by participating companies. A UEFI plugfest was held December 11-14, 2006, in Dupont, WA. The Dupont event drew twenty-seven Forum member companies, including Systems vendors, Operating System vendors, Hardware vendors, and BIOS vendors. The EBC (EFI Byte Code) plugfest was held in Milpitas, CA, Feb 27-Mar 1, 2007, where UEFI Forum member companies openly exchanged technical presentations and conducted interoperability testing between EBC drivers and interpreters.

"The UEFI specification and drive to achieve interoperability offer a tremendous example of industry collaboration, where diverse companies come together for the benefit of the end customers," said Tony Pierce, President of the Unified EFI Forum, Inc. and Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation. "Microsoft is in full support of the industry shift from legacy firmware to UEFI and we encourage platform developers to continue the development and delivery of UEFI capable systems."

Joining its sister working groups, USWG, UTWG and PIWG (Platform Initialization Working Group), the ICWG or Industry Communications Working Group was formed to help build awareness and encourage industry adoption of the UEFI standards through a variety of educational and promotional efforts.

During Microsoft's Windows Server Longhorn plugfest being held April 2-5, 2007, in Redmond, WA, UEFI interoperability testing will be a significant part of the event. The UTWG will also address the needs of the Asia Pacific region by having the next plugfest in Nanjing, China, June 12-15, 2007.

About UEFI

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) specification defines a new model for the interface between 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 modern, well-defined environment for booting an operating system and running pre-boot applications.

The Unified EFI Forum is the group responsible for developing, managing and promoting the UEFI specification. Further information about the UEFI specification and membership opportunities can be found at http://www.uefi.org.

UEFI, and the UEFI logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of the UEFI Forum. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.