History
The original motivation for EFI came during early development of the first Intel–HP Itanium systems in the mid-1990s. BIOS limitations (such as 16-bit processor mode, 1 MB addressable space and PC AT hardware) were unacceptable for the larger server platforms Itanium was targeting. The effort to address these concerns was initially called Intel Boot Initiative, which began in 1998 and was later renamed EFI.
In July 2005 Intel ceased development of the EFI spec at version 1.10, and contributed it to the Unified EFI Forum, which has evolved the specification as the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). The original EFI spec remains owned by Intel, which exclusively provides licenses for EFI-based products, but the UEFI specification is owned by the Forum.
Version 2.1 of the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) specification was released on 7 January 2007. It added cryptography, network authentication and the User Interface Architecture (Human Interface Infrastructure in UEFI). The current UEFI specification, version 2.3.1, was approved in April 2011.
Read more about this topic: Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.”
—Imre Lakatos (1922–1974)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)