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Appendix C: Software Installation
C-1
Appendix C
Software Installation
After all the hardware has been installed, you will need to install the operating
system and other software drivers. The necessary drivers are all included on the
Supermicro CDs that came packaged with your system.
C-1 Introduction to the EFI Platform
The EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) Platform is a new firmware architecture that
provides an interface between the operating system and the computer firmware
(BIOS). It abstracts system data specified in the system BIOS and translates it into
an object-oriented language that can be easily accessed by the OS. It also provides
a rich environment for system pre-installation. EFI initializes chipset, buses and
drivers and locates OS loaders. Once the EFI Firmware boots up the system, it
hands over the system operation to the OS. When running in the background in the
OS environment, EFI continues to provide the system with simple runtime services
such as monitoring firmware settings and system reset. Due to the interoperability
between the OS and the system BIOS, EFI optimizes the performance of 64-bit
Itanium2 systems.
OS
EFI
OS Loader
Primitives
BIOS
Data
Abstracts
System
protocols
Hardware
Drivers
Devices