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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]
Many legacy-free PCs include modern devices that may be used to replace ones omitted, such as a memory card reader replacing the floppy drive. As the first decade of the 21st century progressed, the legacy-free PC went mainstream, with legacy ports removed from commonly available computer systems in all form factors.
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.
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.
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.
Since coreboot initializes the bare hardware, it must be ported to every chipset and motherboard that it supports. As a result, coreboot is available only for a limited number of hardware platforms and motherboard models. One of the coreboot variants is Libreboot, a software distribution partly free of proprietary blobs, aimed at end users.
A system designer should work with their memory and BIOS vendors to implement a suitable SPD programming. As such, the MRC is a part of the BIOS (or firmware) of an Intel motherboard. George Chen, a research and development (R&D) director at ASUS, described it in 2007 as follows: [1]
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.