SCIENCE

Insyde Software announced the delivery of UEFI BIOS and engineering services to customers designing ultra-thin laptops, tablets, and mobile internet devices based on the ARM-based OMAP(TM) 4 platform from Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI).

Insyde Software will ensure that InsydeH2O, the most widely used UEFI BIOS in mobile devices today, has complete support for the OMAP platform features, complies with the most current UEFI specifications , and offers customers the ability to easily customize their OMAP firmware for product differentiation.

Earlier this month at the Computex Taipei trade event, Microsoft Corp. disclosed details of the next version of Windows, code-named "Windows 8". Among this disclosure, Michael Angiulo, Corporate Vice President of the Planning, Hardware and PC Ecosystem team at Microsoft stated that UEFI is an important area of engagement for the next version of Windows, as it represents a major shift in the direction for all PCs and is required on ARM.

Hundreds of OEM and ODM customers worldwide rely on InsydeH2O for its easily customizable modular architecture, fast boot performance, power management configurations, support for UEFI, ACPI , USB, PCI and other industry specification support, flexibility in hardware design and a consistent development environment for platforms of all types and architectures.

"TI's OMAP platform is relied upon to deliver superior user experiences. As consumers shift to tablets and ultrathin laptops for their mobile computing needs, they expect that instant-on access they've come to love on their smartphones to shift with them. The introduction of Insyde Software's UEFI technology enables the OMAP platform to meet that expectation," said Deepu Talla, general manager, OMAP mobile computing, wireless business unit, TI.

Collaborating with TI on OMAP platforms allows us to bring unique value to our customers on architecture where UEFI BIOS has not been used before," said Aven Chuang, SVP and GM, Personal Computing Group, Insyde Software. "Combining the OMAP platform's high-performance and ultra-low power consumption with InsydeH2O's stability and robust feature set gives our mutual mobile computing customers new levels of design opportunity and innovation potential, all with a software development environment with which they are already familiar," added Chuang.