OpenBIOS is a project aiming to provide

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, the ability to act or change without constraint or restriction * Emancipate, attaining civil and political rights or equality * Free (''gratis''), free of charge * Gratis versus libre, the difference betw ...

and

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

implementations of

Open Firmware Open Firmware is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware system, formerly endorsed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It originated at Sun Microsystems where it was known as OpenBoot, and has bee ...

. It is also the name of such an implementation. Most of the implementations provided by OpenBIOS rely on additional lower-level

firmware In computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, h ...

for hardware initialization, such as

coreboot coreboot, formerly known as LinuxBIOS, is a software project aimed at replacing proprietary firmware (BIOS or UEFI) found in most computers with a lightweight firmware designed to perform only the minimum number of tasks necessary to load and r ...

Das U-Boot Das U-Boot (subtitled "the Universal Boot Loader" and often shortened to U-Boot; see ''#History, History'' for more about the name) is an open-source software, open-source Bootloader, boot loader used in Embedded system, embedded devices to per ...

Provided implementations

Open Firmware

Open Firmware implements the IEEE 1275-1994 standard. Open Firmware was released by the compan
Firmworks
The principal architect of Open Firmware,

Mitch Bradley Mitch is a short form of the masculine given name Mitchell. It is also sometimes a nickname, usually for a person with the surname Mitchell. It may refer to: People * Mitch Albom (born 1958), American author, journalist, and musician * Mitch ...

, is chairman of the Open Firmware Working Group and president and founder of Firmworks. The

OLPC XO-1 The OLPC XO (formerly known as $100 Laptop, Children's Machine, 2B1) is a low cost laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world, to provide them with access to knowledge, and opportunities to " ...

laptop uses the Open Firmware implementation. It supports the

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

, and

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between ...

architectures, and is released under the terms of a BSD style license.

SmartFirmware

SmartFirmware includes a C to

FCode Open Firmware is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware system, formerly endorsed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It originated at Sun Microsystems where it was known as OpenBoot, and has bee ...

compiler. It is made by CodeGen, Inc. It is written in

ANSI C ANSI C, ISO C, and Standard C are successive standards for the C programming language published by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 14 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the ...

and supports the

, SPARC,

, MIPS architectures.

OpenBOOT

OpenBOOT was released by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

. It supports the sun4v architecture.

OpenBIOS

OpenBIOS is portable and licensed under the

GPL The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first c ...

. It is produced by the OpenBIOS project.

SLOF

Slimline Open Firmware is produced by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, and is released under a BSD style license. It supports the

architecture.

References

External links

*
SmartFirmware source code
{{Firmware and booting Custom firmware Free BIOS implementations Firmware Software related to embedded Linux