UEFI “BIOS”
When Windows 7 launched last Autumn, our Performance Engineer, John Mese was kind enough to come on camera with me and discuss Lenovo’s Enhanced Experience, our high performance Windows 7 preload. We talked briefly about UEFI, and John mentioned that it offered significant advantages for future PCs.
Speed is one of these advantages. In the 3 minute (or so) video below, I interview John and he demos a ThinkPad T400 with its BIOS replaced with UEFI. Otherwise, the system is a stock T400 with a plain vanilla Windows 7 load from the Microsoft install DVD. It cold boots to a fully functioning Windows desktop in about 11 seconds or so.
In my mind that is nothing short of extraordinary. But we could probably do better:
- The T400 has since been replaced with the T410. The T410’s faster hardware would probably shave another 1 second off boot.
- As I mentioned, the install is a stock Windows 7 load. If we added our Lenovo Windows 7 optimized enhancements, we could expect to shave 1 – 2 additional seconds off boot.
- You’ll notice that the system is running the Windows Basic color scheme. Aero would add approximately 0.5 seconds to boot. We would have done so, but for the drivers available on the install DVD.
- The HDD activity light is not completely solid, so that suggests that optimizing code, load order, and even the HDD choice might save us another 0.5 seconds.
While we won’t be leaking Windows 8 information any time soon, engineers within Lenovo are already hard at work optimizing our systems for Windows 8 as well as Windows 7. Regardless of what operating system you want to run, everyone wants faster PCs.
Lenovo Meet the Modder Dean Liou
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 2
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 1
Lenovo H320 desktop
July 7th, 2010 4:32 pm
It’s great that this will be shipping in the future, but given that it appears to be backwards compatabile is there any possibility that it will be offered as a BIOS firmware update for the older, compatible, computers?
July 7th, 2010 4:39 pm
“engineers within Lenovo are already hard at work optimizing our systems for Windows 8 as well as Windows 7.”
“Regardless of what operating system you want to run, everyone wants faster PCs.”
It’s quite evident that Lenovo has ditched support for Linux/BSD/Unixes entirely now?
X201’s are a good example, all reviews/installs of !=windows fail in a way or another, since not all hardware has drivers/proper support available.
July 7th, 2010 5:06 pm
My W510 arrives on Friday. Will I, at some point, be given a chance to replace my BIOS with the new UEFI? They said on this video this was stock equipment.
I am hoping the answer is YES.
July 7th, 2010 5:10 pm
Well done guys—looking forward to hearing more…
July 7th, 2010 5:31 pm
Nice. Very nice.
However that must have been an SSD, not a HDD.
July 7th, 2010 6:41 pm
It’s way too early to say if we’ll regression test to make it possible to run UEFI on older systems.
Yes on the system running an SSD. It was a Samsung, I think.
July 7th, 2010 7:51 pm
I hope UEFI becomes available for T510, I would upgrade to it.
July 8th, 2010 3:58 am
Hi Matt,
i was immediately reminded of a comment from you when we were discussing strategies to hunt a Thinkpad thief down:
”
“Yes EFI would solve this, but no one in the industry is interested in being first to add the additional cost.”
Which was countered by Yves-Alexis with:
“Except Apple?
see here: http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=263
Seems to me that Lenovo found that if Apple and others were first enough such that Lenovo could also try the step… Seriously guys, i thought you spend a lot of effort on innovation?
I can only agree with tux, it’s a shame that Lenovo concentrates that much on Windows. But as i understood EFI, we would no longer need special drivers for Linux as EFI would do the communication with the hardware, right? If that’s the case i would update my T400s instantly, as Linux likes EFI, and i like shorter boot times (which with a proper SuseLinux installation and an SSD is mostly taken by the BIOS).
best and thanks for the only marginally Windows related blog post
Hecke
July 8th, 2010 4:02 am
update: OK, read some more…
The OS independent drivers are only temporally used. hm.
So i have to keep on asking for a Linux driver for the new fingerprint reader:-( PLEASE!
July 8th, 2010 1:35 pm
WOW – very impressive!!! I would love to see that on my X201!!!! REGRESSION TEST PLEASE!
July 8th, 2010 11:14 pm
Actually it was an Intel SSD. But you gotta admit still impressive!
This is a technology demo, a proof of concept, to excite you fine readers and show off a little that we are innovating constantly. Just more magic coming from our Enhanced Experience initiative.
July 10th, 2010 9:02 am
I’m sure a lot of people would much rather see CoreBoot as a BIOS replacement in ThinkPads.
If you think EFI would be fast, you haven’t seen coreboot.
Also it offers much more possibilities while still being way less complex and not having all the security concerns that arise with EFI.
Also it’s free of charge, and allows for maximum freedom for both, the manufacturer AND the customer.
http://www.coreboot.org
July 15th, 2010 8:13 am
CoreBoot, OpenBOIS etc are the way to go
Another concern with EFI is the Manufacturers being coerced into putting DRM in and having companies or individuals being able to restrict what programs, videos, music etc will run on your computer regardless of whether they have any right todo so.
Big problem is that with BOIS and EFI only a few few people know what is in them. If you want to spy on some one or organisation just pay someone who writes the BOIS to insert a backdoor and no one will ever know.
July 15th, 2010 8:51 pm
From what I’ve read of CoreBoot, I doubt it’ll result in what you think it will if it is implemented by large PC manufacturers.
I’d say Lenovo (and many other manufacturers) are bound by NDAs from hardware companies, and also restrictions on what they can do with the special access to information they are given access to. So a completely open/free driver for all hardware devices (e.g. fingerprint reader) is unlikely, which means you’ll end up with proprietary components sitting in your bootup code again (back to square one).
The other thing you’re missing is that according to the CoreBoot docs, the only way to boot Windows (Lenovo’s primary market, whether you like it or not) is via a legacy BIOS payload implementation. This is not going to suffice moving forward, as Windows starts to take advantage of EFI. Not quite sure how tiano core fits into the picture.
While a compliant EFI payload for coreboot will likely happen and solve the latter; dealing with hardware manufacturers will be the hard part.
Lastly, Tony, yes CoreBoot has more pairs of eyes on the code, ones that are less likely to collude. But you still need to trust the manufacturer (where BIOS/EFI firmware comes from) at some point. Otherwise someone could just pay off some hardware engineer to add some extra logic into the mainboard and the result will be the same.
July 16th, 2010 7:37 am
+1 for spending more effort on Linux support, a little bit less on Windows. Thinkpads used to be famous for their great Linux support.
Also I don’t understand why everyone gets crazy about boot times? Sleep mode is much faster, especially considering that one can start working directly, without having to open programs and files and everything as is necessary after boot.
July 21st, 2010 5:46 am
“Regardless of what operating system you want to run, everyone wants faster PCs.”
I definitely want a hassle free LINUX on Thinkpads.
Why don’t you user OpenBIOS/Open Firmware/CoreBoot ?
(Writing this on an MacBookPro, having EFI since several years …)
July 21st, 2010 5:56 am
@14. Sam:
Basically you are saying, that Lenovo has signed too many NDAs, killing any room for true innovation. ?!!
I bet CoreBoot could not EFI-boot mainstream Windows OSes, because Windows did not support EFI until recently released Win7.
There are actually serious arguments against EFI, even on the Wikipedia pages.
July 22nd, 2010 5:03 pm
Thinkpads have been my choice since 1994 and I’ve loved them and still do.
But if I do not see some real commitment to Linux any time soon my next computer probably will not be made by Lenovo. And the laptops we buy for the school where I work will not be made by Lenovo, since we use Linux as well.
Even some unofficial support, working with the community to help us deliver drivers and tools, would be enough. But I have not heard anything from Lenovo – not through any channel.
July 24th, 2010 4:46 pm
I bought a Thinkpad without OS and have been running various versions of Linux, but never installed windows. So I would love better support for linux and more offers without windows as well.
Of course, we Linux-guys are proportionally louder on the web. But do not forget that linux users usually are tech-savvy people who are asked by friends when they want to buy a computer. Me having a thinkpad and showing it to friends resulted in at least 3 more friends and family buying thinkpads, who would definitely not have bought a thinkpad otherwise (2 of them with windows, btw). So we are proportionally more important customers in the real world as well
July 24th, 2010 8:23 pm
Nice to seen Lenovo working on old speed issues native to computing. SSD is the real speed improvement being shown here I think especially if putting one’s laptop to sleep, but toting the ThinkPad around I do shutdown so a few seconds off the BIOS code would be nice. Don’t forget that my next laptop with have an IPS display, so it is Lenove or HP. I would rather it be a Lenovo Thinkpad.
August 17th, 2010 5:38 am
+1 for coreboot!
(btw, theoretically, what is the role of these blogs? Should they provide information? Should they target this geeky group of customers? Are they there to gather feedback?)