What is UEFI?

Everybody is talking about UEFI even in the build conference we heard this word and in Windows 8 secured boot architecture its a part used in it. So here is a sneak preview of what actually UEFI is.

Q. What UEFI stand for?
A. Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

Q. Is it a software or a hardware?
A. UEFI is a specification which lies in between OS and platform firmware in the software stack.

Q. Why we are comparing to BIOS?
A. Its a replacement of BIOS.

Q. When it started evolving?
A. It started back in 1990s from EFI spec(owned by Intel) and then UEFI came into picture by Unified EFI Forum whose specification was released in 2007 with lots of advancement and improvements.

Q. Whats new in UEFI from BIOS?

A.  UEFI adds cryptography, network authentication, and the User Interface Architecture. Functioning in it is possible via Mouse also.

Q. Why its necessary?
A. AS BIOS is low level software used by PC industry from last 25 years ago and is having lots of limitations which can’t be handled by it so a new advancement is needed for the pre-boot environment. UEFI is not even restricted to some specific processor architecture. UEFI is not limited to 16-bit processes like BIOS but can function for 32-bit and 64-bit easily.

Q. Which OS are using it?
A. Apple, HP-UX, Linux and now Windows 8 is having it in its secured boot architecture.

Stay tuned for more faqs and suggestions are welcome to enhance this article.