Early Video in Pre-OS Environment For Intel Servers

Abstract

In existing server systems, many tasks are required to be performed before the video subsystem can be initialized. Server systems have more complicated memory subsystem and thus, take longer for the BIOS to initialize the memory subsystem and ultimately to boot up. Thus, the user is deprived of video status of the boot process until the video subsystem has booted. On average, a server may take 30-55 seconds before video may be initialized. A user who is not familiar with the delayed video response time may think that the server has failed to boot and recycle the power button in error. User is not able to see any progress, debug, error message if any error comes during booting up of server. Enabling the video in very early phase of booting process, in PEI(Pre EFI initialization-one phase of bios boot process) phase so that video comes up in 2-3 seconds. Enabling the Matrox VGA(Video graphics adaptor) card by writing to VGA card register and set text mode 80 x 25 and provide library for print messages. Video graphics adaptor initialization uses the CAR(cache as RAM) instead of system RAM to perform initialization. Display progress message and debug message to video console to diagnostic the system boot up errors. Using SOL(Serial over LAN) send all debug message to remote host and operate servers remotely for headless server system used in data centers.