UEFI Industry Adoption Takes Major Step Forward with Availability of Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008

BEAVERTON, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Unified EFI Forum, a non-profit, collaborative, specification organization formed to define, promote and manage the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, celebrates a watershed event for industry adoption of UEFI. Microsoft recently released to manufacturing Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 operating systems, which include UEFI support for x64 platforms. Windows Vista SP1 for clients and Windows Server 2008 for servers are the first high-volume operating systems to ship with UEFI support.

This milestone builds on the groundwork laid last year by UEFI Forum member companies in coming together for multiple “plugfest” events that proved the functionality and interoperability of pre-release platform hardware, system firmware, add-in devices and operating systems, all compliant with the UEFI Specifications. The highly successful results of the plugfests, coupled with the availability of a mature Self-Certification Test suite (SCT), has given the industry the confidence to begin shipping UEFI-compliant products. In addition to Microsoft’s Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 releases, the UEFI Forum expects a wide variety of UEFI-compliant hardware and software product shipments in 2008.

“Microsoft is excited about releasing both Windows Vista SP1 client and Windows Server 2008 operating systems with UEFI support. This release culminates over three years of development and testing with our partners to realize an important goal for the UEFI Forum to support the x64 platform. Microsoft has been a leader in the EFI community since the early development of EFI firmware for IA64. Microsoft encourages platform developers to continue development of UEFI platforms to complement the transition to 64-bit computing. Microsoft has been a strong contributor and supporter in development of UEFI as a modern architectural approach to platform firmware based on an industry standard specification,” said Tony Pierce, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation, and President of the Unified EFI Forum, Inc.

About UEFI

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Specification defines a new model for the interface between operating systems and platform firmware. The interface consists of data tables that contain platform-related information, plus boot and runtime service calls that are available to the operating system and its loader. Together, these provide a modern, well-defined environment for booting an operating system and running pre-boot applications.

The Unified EFI Forum is the group responsible for developing, managing and promoting the UEFI Specification. Please visit http://www.uefi.org for further information about the UEFI Specification and membership opportunities.

UEFI and the UEFI logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of the Unified EFI Forum, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.