Understanding the BIOS and Minimalistic Design

Abstract

In the modern computing era, we are surrounded by many consumer electronics devices. These devices have extended their boundary from being computing “only” devices to “companion” devices, namely devices that are used for daily needs including smart home aids, smart appliances, and smart gadgets. From an end user’s standpoint, the device is operational only after it is booted to its GUI and/or connected with the network to operate in faceless mode (example: soft robotic devices) using a remote or applications. The entire device bring-up process, starting with the user pressing the device’s power button to the device getting booted to the UI, remains unnoticed by its user. This process is responsible for bringing the device to life after executing a series of complex CPU initialization sequences, performing the physical memory (also known as RAM) initialization to let applications use the main memory for improved efficiency, increasing the capabilities, and finally performing the chipset initialization to boot the OS (Windows, Linux or one of its flavors, or macOS) from the boot media.