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In computing, BIOS (/ ˈ b aɪ ɒ s,-oʊ s /, BY-oss, -ohss; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the booting process (power-on startup). [1]
Most motherboards have connectors for additional computer fans and integrated temperature sensors to detect motherboard and CPU temperatures and controllable fan connectors which the BIOS or operating system can use to regulate fan speed. [5] Alternatively computers can use a water cooling system instead of many fans.
Intel i945GC northbridge with Pentium Dual-Core microprocessor. This article provides a list of motherboard chipsets made by Intel, divided into three main categories: those that use the PCI bus for interconnection (the 4xx series), those that connect using specialized "hub links" (the 8xx series), and those that connect using PCI Express (the 9xx series).
Computer hardware includes the physical parts of a computer, such as the central processing unit (CPU), random access memory (RAM), motherboard, computer data storage, graphics card, sound card, and computer case. It includes external devices such as a monitor, mouse, keyboard, and speakers. [1] [2]
On older personal computer motherboards, the southbridge is one of the two chips in the core logic chipset, handling many of a computer's input/output functions. The other component of the chipset is the northbridge, which generally handles high speed onboard communications.
There are a number of other companies (AMD, Microchip, Altera, etc.) making specialized chipsets as part of other ICs, and they are not often found in PC hardware (laptop, desktop or server). There are also a number of now defunct companies (like 3com, DEC, SGI) that produced network related chipsets for us in general computers.
An option ROM for the PC platform (i.e. the IBM PC and derived successor computer systems) is a piece of firmware that resides in ROM on an expansion card (or stored along with the main system BIOS), which gets executed to initialize the device and (optionally) add support for the device to the BIOS.
AMIBIOS (also written as AMI BIOS) is the IBM PC-compatible BIOS that was formerly developed and sold by American Megatrends since 1986. [10] In 1994, the company claimed that 75% of PC clones used AMIBIOS. [16] It is used on motherboards made by AMI and by other companies. [3] A chip containing an old version AMIBIOS image, pulled from an ECS ...