PCI Express System Architecture

Introduction to Open Firmware

Introduction

The IEEE standard 1275-1994 entitled Standard for Boot (Initialization, Configuration) Firmware Core Requirements and Practices addresses two areas of concern regarding the boot process:

• The very first section in this chapter described the basic rationale for including a device ROM in the design of a device—it provides a device driver that allows the OS boot program to use the device during the OS boot process. That raises the question of what language to write the device driver in. This is one of the two major areas addressed by the OpenBoot standard. It is the one that the PCI spec is concerned with.

• After the OS is booted into memory, the BIOS passes control to it. If it's a Plug-and-Play capable OS, ...