My guess is that people want to run Linux, OpenSolaris, and maybe someday windows. I think that OpenSolaris can probably do EFI. Also, the bios emulation is a software thing that you can probably load as a loader and runs on top of EFI, so maybe we can use that if it matters.
I guess this is a vote in favor of EFI if it is indeed easier to implement. Nate On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 1:20 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > According to Wikipedia, the following started supporting EFI at some point: > > Linux with elilo > HP-UX on IA-64 > OpenVMS > OSX > Windows 2000 on Itanium > Windows Server 2003 for IA-64 > Windows XP 64-bit Edition > Windows blah blah. > > EFI is the only supported mechanism to boot OSX, I believe, and BIOS is the > only > supported mechanism to boot basically anything not in the list above. The list > fortunately has most important OSes, but that would include DOS for example. > > Basically, OSX has switched completely because they control the whole hardware > stack. I think everyone else is switching too, but because people apparently > still want to run windows 95 on their 16 way super servers they're taking > longer. > > Gabe > > Quoting nathan binkert <[email protected]>: > >> I'd say whichever is easier. What guests are in each camp? >> >> Nate >> >> On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 10:50 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: >> > I don't plan on doing any work on this in the near future, but what are >> people's >> > opinions about implementing an EFI BIOS for m5 rather than a traditional >> BIOS? I >> > think EFI would be easier to implement and work with and easier to get >> > documentation and support tools for, but a traditional BIOS would >> potentially >> > be compatible with more guests. EFI supports a compatibility layer, but at >> that >> > point we'd be approximating implementing both, I think. That may be ok >> because I >> > think most BIOS services are ignored by most modern guests, with the fairly >> > minor exception of a boot loader. >> > >> > Gabe >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > m5-dev mailing list >> > [email protected] >> > http://m5sim.org/mailman/listinfo/m5-dev >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ >> m5-dev mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://m5sim.org/mailman/listinfo/m5-dev >> > > > > > _______________________________________________ m5-dev mailing list [email protected] http://m5sim.org/mailman/listinfo/m5-dev
