Intel BIOS Training Videos

If you are a beginning BIOS engineer, manage BIOS engineers, or even an expert who just needs a refresher, these great UEFI videos from Intel are worthwhile watching.

I make a point of periodically visiting William Leara’s excellent BIOS site, Basic Input/Output, subtitled Adventures in the Magic of BIOS Development! William posts interesting articles and commentary about, in his own words, the arcane art of PC BIOS development. It’s a “one-stop-shop” for keeping up with the comings and goings within the UEFI world. If you have any interest in BIOS, the site is definitely worth a visit.

One posting that I really enjoyed was The Best Movies You’ve (Probably) Never Seen. Although the title isn’t very descriptive, this page is a pointer to what I consider to be some of the best BIOS training videos ever. The material is logically organized into digestible “chunks” of small tutorial lessons and topics, and covers all phases from SEC through BDS. And Intel has done a great job of using simple graphics and animation to convey complex topics simply, as for example this PEI Phase Flow:

There’s an excellent overview of UEFI debugging that comes early in Lesson 1. It rates different types of debugging from left to right, with Source Level Debugging considered “best and most recommended” to Status Code Debugging being “effective and least recommended”:

Our SourcePoint debugger is the one application that combines both Source Level debug and a greatly enhanced version of Debug Text Option debug. The Source Level debug subject is covered in our UEFI Framework Debugging datasheet, and a powerful new way of providing an at-speed version of the Debug Text Option debug (through the use of Intel Trace Hub to overcome performance issues associated with Printf statements) is in our eBook, Intel Trace Hub. Note that both documents require registration.