KernelTrap: Linus On The Extensible Firmware Interface
Jul 26, 2006, 21:00 (0 Talkback[s])
"A recent patch posted to the lkml contained the following
description, 'this patch adds an efi e820 memory mapping,' in
response to which Andrew Morton asked, 'why?'. Linus Torvalds
offered his views on EFI, the Extensible Firmware Interface
beginning by describing it as 'this other Intel brain-damage (the
first one being ACPI).' EFI is a replacement for BIOS, originally
designed for use on the ia64 architecture though since adopted by
other computers, including Apple's Intel-based Macs. Linus went on
to explain, 'the original EFI code in the kernel basically
duplicates all the BIOS interfaces (ie everything that looks at a
memory map comes in two varieties: the normal and tested BIOS e820
variety, and the usually broken and hacked-up EFI memory map
variety). Translating the EFI memory map to e820 is very much the
sane thing to do...'"
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