[OpenBIOS] ia64: how do we do BIOS? EFI?

Stefan Reinauer stepan at core-systems.de
Tue Aug 28 04:43:51 CEST 2001


* Ronald G Minnich <rminnich at lanl.gov> [010828 00:15]:
> 
> The Intel ia64 is planned to ship with EFI. I have had some very
> depressing converations with some Intel people which inevitably end with:
> "we don't care what you want to do, EFI is the best, you have to use it".

Since the Alpha died an unhonourable death I have heard quite a few rumours 
like that. ;-> I even heard sometimes signing an NDA does not provide you
with the necessary information to get you any further ;-> I don't mean to be
vague but sometimes one works on a project for a company which he can't openly
disuss....it seems to be like this at lots of companies :->

> In other words, Intel is playing the Monopoly card again and has no
> intention of telling us how to write BIOSes for the ia64.

They intend that the quality of the firmware be at least as
good/suboordinate/noncompliant as the quality of the hardware.
> 
> Has anyone looked at this? this issue is crucial to both openbios and
> linuxbios. What should we do? I am downloading EFI now and it really looks
> like crap. It even includes a non-redistributable FAT-32 driver (courtesy
> microsoft).

Let's just wait for the next generation of Alpha^H^H^H^H IA64 hardware
and how things evolve. If this hardware should at some time become close
enough to certain competitors they bought (not to mention Alpha) there 
might be a small chance to reuse the information we already paid so dearly
for with our blood, sweat and tears. Maybe it's just another rumour but I
have heard that the hardware is not exactly what they want it to be and that
things have to change if they want to keep that architecture alive.

Best regards,
	Stefan


-- 
Mad, adj.:
        Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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