UEFI

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
Abbreviation	UEFI
Status	Published
Year started	2006
Latest version	2.10; August 29, 2022
Organization	UEFI Forum
Related standards	ACPI, UEFI Platform Initialization
Predecessor	BIOS
Domain	Firmware
Website	uefi.org

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI, /ˈjuːɪfaɪ/ or as an acronym) is a specification that defines the architecture of the platform firmware used for booting the computer hardware and its interface for interaction with the operating system. Examples of firmware that implement the specification are AMI Aptio, Phoenix SecureCore, TianoCore EDK II, InsydeH2O. UEFI replaces the BIOS which was present in the boot ROM of all personal computers that are IBM PC compatible, although it can provide backwards compatibility with the BIOS using CSM booting. Intel developed the original Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) specification. Some of the EFI's practices and data formats mirror those of Microsoft Windows. In 2005, UEFI deprecated EFI 1.10 (the final release of EFI).

Boot order selection menu on a Lenovo ThinkPad T470 with UEFI

The UEFI implementation is usually stored on a NOR-based EEPROM that is located on the mainboard. They can use different I/O protocols, but SPI is the most common.

UEFI is independent of platform and programming language, but C is used for the reference implementation TianoCore EDKII.

Contrary to its predecessor BIOS which is a de facto standard originally created by IBM as proprietary software, UEFI is an open standard maintained by an industry consortium.

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