Chapter 5: Software Installation
5-1
Chapter 5
Software Drivers and the Operating System
Installation
After all the hardware has been installed, you 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
motherboard.
5-1 Introduction to the EFI Platform
OS
EFI
OS Loader
Primitives
BIOS
Data
Abstracts
System
protocols
Hardware
Drivers
Devices
The EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) Platform
is a new firmware architecture that provides
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 provides a rich
environment for system pre-installation. EFI
initializes chipset, buses, 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 still provides 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 the 64-bit
Itanium2 systems.
