The new year of Sir Arthur’s Den starts with a news that was mentioned a lot during the past months, a technology novelty destined to affect in a more or less significant way users computing life in the years to come. The news is that Intel decided to finally abandon BIOS support starting from 2020, forcing a paradigm shift that many – myself included – could view as unacceptable in exchange for improvements that, when put to the test, are nothing more than pure and simple propaganda of Santa Clara’s marketing.

The announcement of the BIOS death came from Brian Richardson, Intel senior technical marketing engineer better known as the “BIOS guy” and currently committed to promoting the industry transition towards the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) technology. Richardson talked about a “last mile” to walk to remove the BIOS from modern computer firmware, highlighting the benefits coming from a UEFI-only approach and revealing the date decided by Intel for the switch.

When we talk about BIOS we are of course referring to the infrastructural “heart” of the original IBM PC, the fundamental component of the x86 architecture dedicated to initializing basic computer hardware during boot and which was gradually left behind with the arrival of 32-bit operating systems and dedicated peripheral drivers.

As the most modern CPUs still ensure compatibility with the original x86 instructions set (the one of the 8086/8088 chips), the UEFI firmware is also capable of working in “BIOS mode” thanks to the inclusion of the Compatibility Support Module (CSM). With the right hardware equipment, thanks to CSM it’s still possible to boot historic operating systems like MS-DOS, install FreeDOS and to use all the maintenance tools designed to run independently from the OS installed on the PC.

According to Intel, however, the CSM+BIOS pair is a hindrance to technology evolution because it puts security at risk and promotes the execution of unsigned code outside the Secure Boot standard, makes product validation more complex and it doesn’t let users fully appreciate the capabilities of the new technologies only available in a UEFI environment.

In short it’s time to give up on the 16-bit boot code, Intel suggests, hence the corporation’s new computer platforms coming in 2020 will finally abandon the BIOS forcing OEMs to support UEFI Class 3. A further restriction, with Secure Boot mode that cannot be disabled by the user, will come later thanks to the UEFI Class 3+. Right now AMD plans are not known, but the fact that Sunnyvale takes part to the UEFI Forum just like Intel doesn’t bode well on this front.

What is already certain right now, however, is that Intel’s choice to completely abandon BIOS will prevent retrocomputing enthusiasts from experimenting with old software natively, power users from using maintenance and benchmark tools that are still effective but haven’t being updated in a while – and so they aren’t compatible with UEFI mode boot – and it will force users to deal with the unpleasant idiosyncrasies of some UEFI implementations where the GUI’s graphics elements seem to be more important than everything else. Once the BIOS is removed, the rumors say, Intel could very well decide to part with other outdated technologies like the real mode which still is the state of an x86 CPU at startup.

As for the UEFI Class 3 superior security, in the end, we could laugh our asses off if there weren’t so much to cry about: UEFI complexity forces Linux users to deal with unpleasant – and often unrecoverable – cases of firmware corruption, while the entire x86 platform from Intel continues to offer substantial business opportunities to black hat hackers and cyber-criminals with or without Secure Boot on. After all Intel is the corporation that put an entire, secret mini-CPU full of security bugs inside its chipsets (Intel Management Engine), and that for decades has continued to sell processors based on a vulnerable hardware design which can now be compromised thanks to the Meltdown and Spectre apocalypse. So much for BIOS insecurity…

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