LinuxBIOS

LinuxBIOS is an Open Source project aimed at replacing the normal BIOS with a little bit of hardware initialization and a compressed Linux kernel that can be booted from a cold start. The project was started as part of clustering research work in the Cluster Reseach Lab at the Advanced Computing Laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The primary motivation behind the project was the desire to have the operating system gain control of a cluster node from power on. Other beneficial consequences of using LinuxBIOS include needing only two working motors to boot (cpu fan and power supply), fast boot times (current fastest is 3 seconds), and freedom from proprietary (buggy) BIOS code, to name a few. Having the BIOS code available in-house and it being based on known and open technology like Linux/RTLinux allows to respond to bugs and adopt to security demands at a much more fine grane level than would be posible with a proprietary BIOS (I remember long lists of BIOS-passwords floating around the internet..)

Suported main-boards:

• Intel L440GX+
• Winfast 6300
• Procomm BST1B -based mainboards
• Gigabit GA-6BXC
• SiS 730 (i.e. K7) chipset
• VIA VT5292A
• VIA VT5426
• ASUS CUA ALI TNT2 (Acer
• M1631/M1535d chipset)

As you can see from the list of devices these are not exactly typical embedded systems (allthough a cluster in a lunch-box is to be concidered an embedded cluster