Ubios: China's Alternative to UEFI

https://pbxscience.com/ubios-chinas-alternative-to-uefi-and-the-new-era-of-firmware-standards/

by 1970-01-01 • 9 months ago

34 20 9 months ago

znpy• 9 months ago

I’d honestly would like to read bcantrill’s opinion on this

wmf• 9 months ago

I'm not Bryan but this sounds like the same over-abstracted architecture astronaut approach as UEFI. It's the compete opposite of Oxide's firmware.

bcantrill• 9 months ago

Bingo: forcing UEFI and D-Bus to breed in captivity is antithetical to our approach of holistic boot.[0][1]

[0] https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0241

[1] https://www.osfc.io/2022/talks/i-have-come-to-bury-the-bios-...

Andrex• 9 months ago

As the United States has cut China off from advanced semiconductor technology, tightened controls on Chinese investments in U.S. firms, and scrutinized the flow of Chinese students and scholars to American universities, Beijing has stressed the need for indigenous innovation and to seize control of core technologies.

Sounds pretty self-defeating.

_blk• 9 months ago

But can it also run a full IP stack? [Rhetorical]

BobbyTables22• 9 months ago

This seems utterly bizarre.

It’s one thing to make a new firmware for PCs…

But they really don’t care about Linux or Windows? Or do they expect each to cave and support their thing because they make the world’s crap?

They simply could have written their own UEFI implementation if they so desired…

This feels more like a flex to the rest of the world than anything useful.

hulitu2• 9 months ago

But they really don’t care about Linux or Windows?

They are both US products, subject to export controls.

estimator72922• 9 months ago

Linux is not a "US product" what the hell are you even talking about?

BobbyTables22• 9 months ago

You mean the thing started by a Swedish guy living in Finland?

lproven2• 9 months ago

Aside from the previous 2 comments refuting this for Linux, I'd point out the multiple Chinese Linux distros that have been around for years now.

Deepin/Uniontech UOS -- based on Debian.

It has its own desktop environment, DDE, available on some Western distros and pretty good.

Kylin/OpenKylin/Ubuntu Kylin -- based on Ubuntu.

Again, its own desktop, UKUI, also available on Ubuntu itself and a few other distros.

EulerOS/OpenEuler -- based on CentOS Linux, and one of only 2 distros to have held official UNIX™ certification.

The other being Inspur K/UX, also Chinese I think.

caherrerapa• 9 months ago

6 months later, researchers found that this was sending data back home and had hardcoded security keys

fyrn_• 9 months ago

This article feels super AI written. It explains what a virtual bus is like like 6 times in different ways

lproven2• 9 months ago

This article feels super AI written.

That struck me, too.

It explains what a virtual bus is like like 6 times in different ways

Without ever actually really nailing down what the term means for software.

hackandthink• 9 months ago

"UBIOS will be further discussed and revealed by the Global Computing Consortium at the 2025 Global Computing Conference in Shenzhen this November. For a country looking to both bolster its own domestic computing ecosystem and step away from American systems that constrict non-standard hardware implementations, the development of UBIOS may prove to be a major win for China. However, whether UBIOS becomes widely adopted and championed like the open standard RISC-V, or widely abandoned like LoongArch, remains to be seen."

https://news.mydrivers.com/1/1081/1081504.htm

cheschire• 9 months ago

It doesn’t need to be widely adopted. Sometimes countries intentionally maintain different standards.

As an example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_of_gauge

ramshanker• 9 months ago

More competetion always welcome.

Few weeks back they had HDMI/DisplayPort alternate standardized as well.

kasabali• 9 months ago

UEFI provides advantages including faster boot times through parallel hardware initialization

My older BIOS motherboards boot far quicker than "modern" UEFI ones.

hulitu2• 9 months ago

Technical Maturity: The UEFI Forum updated all three of its core specifications (ACPI, UEFI, and PI) as recently as December 2024.

Updates are not a sign of technical maturity. You don't change the door to your house every year.

estimator72922• 9 months ago

Where have you been for the last decade? These days if a project isn't updated at least biweekly it's considered abandoned rotting garbage

Ubios: China's Alternative to UEFI

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