Updating the CSC5400 BIOS is simple and safe. The fast updatability feature of the BIOS is initiated by the BMC at the run-time. The BIOS provides vital boot and run time services for the OS loader and the OS, which includes 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 5400 platform:
Reducing Down Time
The SBC 5400 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 the CSC5400 BIOS enables safe, speedy, and recoverable upgrade of the BIOS at run time. The upgrade functionality includes:
- Upgrading the BIOS at run time uses two Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) flash devices.
- One SPI device provides the active BIOS image, while the other flash device holds the backup BIOS image.
- When the upgrade is initiated, the new BIOS image is copied to the backup flash device, ensuring that the current BIOS image remains untouched. The recently updated flash device is marked as an “Active” device, while the flash device holding the original BIOS becomes a “backup” device.
- When the system reboots, the new BIOS is used for booting as it is marked as an “Active” device.
Note
This functionality is implemented and controlled by BMC.
Flash Update Time of Less than Five Minutes
On SBC 5400 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 the the flash programming time and does not include the time to transfer the firmware image to the SBC.
Overview
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