UEFI Application to Perform Prerequisites Firmware Configuration and Lite BIOS Development

Abstract

Intel NUC (Next Unit of Computing) is a small Personal computer with the full size computing power which can be customized easily with many options like, pro- cessor, RAM, secondary storage etc. Intel NUCs need some prerequisites firmware configuration and firmware update before the user can install the OS. It depends on your NUC model and the OS you want to install. Intel NUC product page and guide offers lot of version of firmware configuration. For so many users, it is tedious and complex to configure BIOS setup. It leads to extra process for the user to search for particular model specific instruction and then implement it. To reduce complexity and confusion of NUC setup for user and improve user experience. Here by UEFI Shell Application is designed which can Identify user NUC model. It is having inter- active design for the user to provide the choice of various parameters inclusion OS. UEFI application configures firmware for the user also it can update firmware and download latest firmware configuration for specific models. Intel BIOS development team always uses software based pre-silicon environment for development of BIOS before power on which is totally a software based solution. Intel also has hybrid and hardware based pre silicon solutions which are not used by BIOS development team as the time taken by it to boot is very long. So, Intel have hybrid and hardware base pre silicon environment but the use of this environment is very limited. To take advantage of Hybrid and hardware base pre silicon environment in UEFI BIOS development and testing this project propose to have Lite BIOS which will boot faster on Hybrid and hardware base pre silicon environment but have same boot ow as UEFI BIOS with only boot critical driver and features. It will utilize pre silicon environment and give BIOS development and testing confidence about BIOS before power on.