BIOS will be dead in three years?
It's the one major part of the PC that's still reminiscent of the PC's primordial, text-based beginnings, but the familiarly-clunky BIOS could soon be on its deathbed, according to MSI. The motherboard maker says it's now making a big shift towards point and click UEFI systems, and it's all going to kick off at the end of this year.
A spokesperson for the company in Taiwan who wished to remain anonymous said that "MSI will start to phase in UEFI starting from the end of this year, and we expect it will be widely adopted after three years."
According to the MSI mole, the first new UEFI products will be based on Intel's Sandy Bridge chipset, spanning the whole field from entry-level boards to high-end kit. The company says that it expects the boards to be introduced towards the end of this year, and into early 2011. "We won’t consider UEFI as an expensive premium feature," said the spokesperson, "but as a must-have for everyone!"
UEFI (universal extensible firmware interface) is a continuation of Intel's original EFI project, which was designed to replace the BIOS with a user-friendly point-and-click interface, as well as addressing many other troublesome areas of the PC's legacy.
MSI has previously dabbled in UEFI in 2008, when it introduced its Click BIOS on a few motherboards based on Intel's P45 chipsets. However, the move to UEFI is now starting to become much more important because of its implications for storage.
Last month, Seagate revealed to THINQ that a UEFI system would be an essential requirement in order for a PC to boot from a drive larger than 2TB.
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A spokesperson for the company in Taiwan who wished to remain anonymous said that "MSI will start to phase in UEFI starting from the end of this year, and we expect it will be widely adopted after three years."
According to the MSI mole, the first new UEFI products will be based on Intel's Sandy Bridge chipset, spanning the whole field from entry-level boards to high-end kit. The company says that it expects the boards to be introduced towards the end of this year, and into early 2011. "We won’t consider UEFI as an expensive premium feature," said the spokesperson, "but as a must-have for everyone!"
UEFI (universal extensible firmware interface) is a continuation of Intel's original EFI project, which was designed to replace the BIOS with a user-friendly point-and-click interface, as well as addressing many other troublesome areas of the PC's legacy.
MSI has previously dabbled in UEFI in 2008, when it introduced its Click BIOS on a few motherboards based on Intel's P45 chipsets. However, the move to UEFI is now starting to become much more important because of its implications for storage.
Last month, Seagate revealed to THINQ that a UEFI system would be an essential requirement in order for a PC to boot from a drive larger than 2TB.
More...
