UEFI is a program that can be viewed as a more robust and modern BIOS. It has the same role as the BIOS, but it also has some advantages over it, such as encryption, remote diagnosis and computer repair even if the system does not have an installed operating system. This type of BIOS was invented by Intel and was released in 2005.
UEFI has become popular since the launch of the Windows 8 operating system since it was the first operating system with a large number of users to provide native support to UEFI. Like any traditional BIOS, UEFI is personalized by the motherboard manufacturer you use. For tablets and laptops, UEFI will display a small number of settings. In the next image, you can see what it looks like on the Surface Pro 2 tablet from Microsoft. In the case of computers, UEFI will display more settings than those found on a normal BIOS.
UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is the new BIOS concept being its replacement for PCs, servers, laptops. UEFI is used as a charging and operating environment for other classes of devices, including printers, scanners, routers, network switches, storage devices, and embedded systems. In recent years, tablet and smartphone manufacturers have begun to incorporate new boot technology into them.
UEFI, was originally developed by Intel under the Intel Boot Initiative name, to remove the old issues on 64-bit Itanium processors. It’s designed to improve how the operating system uses hardware, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to solve the limitations of using the BIOS. The UEFI code is not stored in the firmware, as is the BIOS. UEFI is stored in flash memory, on the motherboard, on the hard disk, or even on a network. UEFI is written in C language and is available on IA-64, x86 (32-bit and 64-bit) platforms and ARM platforms.
UEFI brings several major benefits:
1. Includes secure boot security that does not allow booting unauthorized operating systems or running rootkit, bootkit malware, loosening the computer case, and so on.
2. Lower start and resume from hibernation
3. HDD support greater than 2.2 TB
4. Possibility of forming partitions with a volume of 18 exits
5. Supports up to 128 partitions (with GPT)
6. Support for 64-bit drivers
7. Ability to use over 17.2 GB of RAM
8. Legacy Compatibility: The UEFI interface can be disabled and the firmware will work in the BIOS
9. Graphics interface much advanced than the BIOS
10. Functions for accessing and using an Internet local area network without an operating system is installed (starting or installing the operating system from another network server, diagnosing, accessing web addresses for downloading drivers, or updating.
UEFI’s official terminology classifies six distinct steps in the launch process of the operating system:
1. Security (SEC) – Performing authentication and integrity verification processes (SecureBoot, password, USB token)
2. Pre-EFI Initialization (PEI) – pre-initialization that initializes the processor, memory, and chipset.
3. Driver Execution Environment (DXE) – recording all drivers, parallel restart of hardware components; during this stage also appears the first-speed increase
4. Boot Dev Select (BDS): boot manager (grub)
5. Transient System Load (TSL): the transient phase in which the operating system is loaded; EFI services will be closed via ExitBootServices, which will be sent to the operating system
6. RunTime (RT): The operating system is initialized.