Tech companies form Unified EFI Forum

Leading technology companies, such as AMD, American Megatrends, Dell, HP, Intel, IBM, Insyde Software, Microsoft and Phoenix have formed the Unified EFI Forum. The Forum will assume responsibility from Intel for the evolution and promotion of the EFI Specification, which details an interface to hand off control of a system from the pre-boot environment to current and next-generation operating systems. EFI is already supported by a number of 64-bit operating systems and platforms, and is an emerging interface for 32-bit operating systems.

The inclusion of UEFI in operating systems and platforms will advance interoperability between platforms and add-in cards and pave the way for improvements in boot performance and robustness. The Forum will review the present EFI 1.10 Specification for any required changes, and intends to publish the first Unified EFI Specification by the end of 2005. The Forum will also make available test suites for the UEFI Specification based on contributions from member companies.

Interested parties are invited to participate in the activities of the Unified EFI Forum as either Contributors or Adopters. The Promoters have agreed that licenses to any Promoter intellectual property required to implement the specification will be available on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. More information is available at http://www.uefi.org.