08-12-2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by
balaji_prk
This ran through my mind while writing a doc, may be dumb one.
I have seen people using the terms Microcode and Firmware in IBM system p world interchangeably.
Firmware update or microcode update
Is that right? Are they synonyms?
Um, yes and no :-) Firmware is a piece of software for different kind of peripherals (routers, switches, ...). Microcode goes into the CPU, providing a slightly higher level or more complex commands based on the CPU's basic ("hard-wired") commands. For example, Digital's (R.I.P) VAX (R.I.P) used to have a microcode command to solve a polynomial.
pen
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UEFI(8) BSD System Manager's Manual UEFI(8)
NAME
UEFI -- Unified Extensible Firmware Interface bootstrapping procedures
DESCRIPTION
The UEFI Unified Extensible Firmware Interface provides boot- and run-time services to operating systems. UEFI is a replacement for the
legacy BIOS on the i386 and amd64 CPU architectures, and is also used on arm64 and ia64.
The UEFI boot process loads system bootstrap code located in an EFI System Partition (ESP). The ESP is a GPT or MBR partition with a spe-
cific identifier that contains an msdosfs(5) FAT file system with a specified file hierarchy.
Partition Scheme ESP Identifier
GPT C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
MBR 0xEF
The UEFI boot process proceeds as follows:
1. UEFI firmware runs at power up and searches for an OS loader in the EFI system partition. The path to the loader may be set by an
EFI environment variable. If not set, the default is /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI. The default UEFI boot configuration for FreeBSD
installs boot1.efi as /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI.
2. boot1.efi locates the first partition with the type freebsd-ufs, and from it loads loader.efi.
3. loader.efi loads and boots the kernel, as described in loader(8).
The vt(4) system console is automatically selected when booting via UEFI.
FILES
/boot/boot1.efi
First stage UEFI bootstrap
/boot/boot1.efifat
msdosfs(5) FAT file system image containing boot1.efi for use by bsdinstall(8) and the bootcode argument to gpart(8).
/boot/loader.efi
Final stage bootstrap
/boot/kernel/kernel
default kernel
/boot/kernel.old/kernel
typical non-default kernel (optional)
SEE ALSO
vt(4), msdosfs(5), boot(8), gpart(8)
HISTORY
UEFI boot support first appeared in FreeBSD 10.1.
AUTHORS
UEFI boot support was developed by Benno Rice <benno@FreeBSD.org>, Ed Maste <emaste@FreeBSD.org>, and Nathan Whitehorn
<nwhitehorn@FreeBSD.org>. The FreeBSD Foundation sponsored portions of the work.
CAVEATS
EFI environment variables are not supported by loader(8) or the kernel.
boot1.efi loads loader.efi from the first FreeBSD-UFS file system it locates, even if it is on a different disk.
boot1.efi cannot load loader.efi from a ZFS(8) file system. As a result, UEFI does not support a typical root file system on ZFS configura-
tion.
BSD
October 17, 2014 BSD