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During the POST, the BIOS must integrate multiple competing, changing, and even mutually exclusive standards and initiatives for the matrix of hardware and operating systems the PC is expected to support, although at most only simple memory tests and the setup screen are displayed.
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] The firmware comes pre ...
A watchdog timer (WDT, or simply a watchdog), sometimes called a computer operating properly timer (COP timer), [1] is an electronic or software timer that is used to detect and recover from computer malfunctions. Watchdog timers are widely used in computers to facilitate automatic correction of temporary hardware faults, and to prevent errant ...
UEFI requires the firmware and operating system loader (or kernel) to be size-matched; that is, a 64-bit UEFI firmware implementation can load only a 64-bit operating system (OS) boot loader or kernel (unless the CSM-based legacy boot is used) and the same applies to 32-bit.
In computing, serial presence detect (SPD) is a standardized way to automatically access information about a memory module.Earlier 72-pin SIMMs included five pins that provided five bits of parallel presence detect (PPD) data, but the 168-pin DIMM standard changed to a serial presence detect to encode more information.
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On some systems, a computer user can trigger an NMI through hardware and software debugging interfaces and system reset buttons. Programmers typically use debugging NMIs to diagnose and fix faulty code. In such cases, an NMI can execute an interrupt handler that transfers control to a special monitor program. From this program, a developer can ...
As originally used, firmware contrasted with hardware (the CPU itself) and software (normal instructions executing on a CPU). It was not composed of CPU machine instructions, but of lower-level microcode involved in the implementation of machine instructions. It existed on the boundary between hardware and software; thus the name firmware.