Short for Extensible Firmware Interface, EFI is a new BIOS standard developed by Intel and introduced with the release of IA-64 that greatly improves the features available in the BIOS. Some of the major changes in EFI include getting rid of theboot loader, which allows the BIOS to select the operating system, EFI enables vendors to create drivers that cannot be reverse engineered, and has a small shellthat can be run at boot that allows a small and manageable working environmentwithout anything on the computer.
The EFI specification has been made into a general standard known as UEFI.
- The official Intel EFI specification page can be found athttp://www.intel.com/technology/efi/
- Computer motherboard help and support.
