Updating the CSC7000 BIOS is simple and safe. The fast updatability feature of BIOS is initiated by BMC at the run-time. BIOS provides vital boot and run time services for OS loader and OS, which includes as time services, text and graphical consoles, ACPI sleep states, early initialization of processor, memory configuration, and so on. It also offers different interfaces such as console serial redirection, Keyboard/Video/Mouse (KVM) access, USB port access, and so on. The following BIOS features are included in the SBC 7000 platform:

Reducing Down Time

The SBC 7000 BIOS upgrade process is designed to reduce the down-time of the SBC box as much as possible. The new BIOS images are installed to a backing (double-buffered) FLASH image to reduce downtime (as the system can be up and running while image is loaded) and to facilitate revert.

Hot Upgrade Functionality

Hot upgrading CSC7000 BIOS enables safe, speedy, and recoverable upgrade of BIOS at run time. The upgrade functionality includes:

  • Upgrading BIOS at run time is implemented by using two Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) flash devices.
  • One SPI device provides the active BIOS image, while the other flash device holds backup BIOS image.
  • When the upgrade is initiated, new BIOS image is copied to the backup flash device. This ensures that the current BIOS image remains untouched. The recently updated flash device is marked as “Active” device. The flash device holding original BIOS becomes “backup” device.
  • At the time of system reboot, the new BIOS is used for booting as it is marked as “Active” device.\

Note

This functionality is implemented and controlled by BMC. 

Flash Update Time of Less than Five Minutes

On SBC 7000 platform, the BIOS update takes less than five minutes. The flash update occurs when the host is running. The time to update firmware (BIOS or BMC) is defined as the flash programming time and does not include the time to transfer the firmware image to the SBC.

Continue to Downloading Firmware Image.

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