SUPER MICRO Computer 6113L-i Appendix C Software Installation, Introduction to the EFI Platform

Appendix C: Software Installation

Appendix C

Software Installation

After all the hardware has been installed, you will need to install the operating system and other software drivers. The necessary drivers are all included on the Supermicro CDs that came packaged with your system.

C-1 Introduction to the EFI Platform

The EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) Platform is a new firmware architecture that provides an interface between the operating system and the computer firmware (BIOS). It abstracts system data specified in the system BIOS and translates it into an object-oriented language that can be easily accessed by the OS. It also provides a rich environment for system pre-installation. EFI initializes chipset, buses and drivers and locates OS loaders. Once the EFI Firmware boots up the system, it hands over the system operation to the OS. When running in the background in the OS environment, EFI continues to provide the system with simple runtime services such as monitoring firmware settings and system reset. Due to the interoperability between the OS and the system BIOS, EFI optimizes the performance of 64-bit Itanium2 systems.

OS

Primitives	OS Loader
EFI
System protocols	Data Abstracts
BIOS
Devices	Drivers

Hardware

C-1