American Megatrends Will Demonstrate Aptio(R) Firmware Interoperability at the UEFI Plugfest

Market Wire, November, 2006

AMI will demonstrate the cross-platform interoperability of its new generation EFI firmware platform at the UEFI Plugfest held December 11-18, in Dupont, WA.

American Megatrends, a member of the Unified EFI Forum (UEFI), will attend the UEFI 2.0 testing workshop held at the Intel Dupont Optimization Lab Facility, in Dupont, Washington. Plugfests are held periodically to verify the interoperability of new hardware and firmware from member companies of the UEFI group. AMI will test the latest version of its new generation firmware, Aptio® 4.5. Based on the Intel® Platform Innovation Framework for EFI PEI and DXE core, Aptio® enables desktop, mobile, server or embedded platforms. AMI supports UEFI 2.0 Specification as well as native X64 technology (x86-32 & x64 UEFI bindings).

Participants in the test event will include UEFI members who are Add-in Card Vendors, Operating System Vendors, Independent Software Vendors, Independent BIOS Vendors and Original Equipment / Design Manufacturers (OEM / ODM) platform Vendors.

AMI will verify the compatibility of its EFI firmware platform, Aptio, and its integration with Vista 64 (Windows Server Longhorn) on a variety of hardware platforms and Host Bus Adapters. Aptio will be tested with a variety of Platforms from AMD, ATI, Intel, Nvidia, and other hardware and component vendors to verify full cross-platform interoperability.

"AMI is ready to serve mobile, desktop and server vendors with a robust EFI implementation of Aptio that adds value to the Framework PEI and DXE core to offer all the stability required to support the next technology wave in computing," said Stefano Righi, AMI Software Development Director. "Aptio 4.5 with UEFI 2.0 and native X64 is ready to enable the next generation of Operating Systems, opening new possibilities to end-users and designers alike."

AMI representatives will also hold face-to-face meetings with other members of the consortium to contribute defining future evolutions of the UEFI standard.

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is an alliance between several leading technology companies including AMD, American Megatrends, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Phoenix Technologies, and Insyde Software. The non-profit corporation will assume responsibility for the development and promotion of the EFI specification, a pre-boot interface originally developed by Intel that is intended to replace the traditional PC BIOS.

Intel MPG and other silicon providers have selected Aptio to power the reference boards shipped to OEMs and ODMs. Incorporating 20 years experience in BIOS and firmware development, AMI's Aptio goes beyond BIOS limitations. The firmware delivers all the benefits of the EFI model in a firmware package that simplifies portability, thanks to its enhanced architecture and rich development tools. Written in C, a language widely known by software engineers, Aptio is highly modular and portable across various platforms. Aptio's driver model delivers higher flexibility than BIOS and provides opportunity for utilities and applications for the pre-boot environment.

The structure of Aptio 4.5 architecture provides ease of porting and development. Features include:

--  Porting Template
--  Board, Chipset and Core functional directories
--  Table-based initialization
--  CSP library
    

The Porting Template provides a standard porting environment that presents similar functionality and look and feel across various implementations, with documented porting steps. Easy to adopt and maintain, the template shortens engineers' learning curve and allows faster incorporation of modifications and new functionality.

Aptio has only three levels of functional directories: Board, Chipset and Core. The same organization is repeated across all sub-components. With a smaller number of directories, code footprint is reduced and maintenance is easier.

This firmware organization has been applied to AMIBIOS8, another AMI BIOS product that has received great customer success.

About AMI

Founded in 1985, American Megatrends Inc. (AMI), best known for AMIBIOS, supplies state-of-the-art hardware, software and utilities to today's high-tech manufacturers. AMI, focused on IP Storage Area Networks (IP-SAN), Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Management, also offers remote server management, KVM over IP, IPMI 2.0 firmware and high-density motherboards. AMI is a member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and an Associate Member with the Intel® Communications Alliance, a community of communications and embedded developers and solution providers. Headquartered in Atlanta, AMI has locations in the U.S., China, Germany, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan to better serve its customers.

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