UEFI
- https://uefi.org/specifications
- A boot firmware, on an
IBM-Compatible system, loaded from a motherboard’s ROM chip (
CMOS), to initialise the CPU, basic hardware, and loading the operating system
- Establishes system tables pointing to other important tables such as ACPI
- Largely supersedes BIOS, but most platforms will still support both in some fashion
- Is basically a mini operating-system - putting the processor into either 32-bit or 64-bit (vs the BIOS will usually only initialise into 16-bit), and even has basic File System access
- Looks for a Bootloader by using its file system code to find a specific file, rather than looking for a magic binary blob at the start of the disk