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magnat

Some other examples:

- ACPI configuration for power management and platform stuff [1]

- Bitcoin transactions [2]

- TrueType fonts [3]

[1] https://wiki.osdev.org/AML

[2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script

[3] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/t...

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Since ACPI was mentioned, let's not forget about EFI!

https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.10/22_EFI_Byte_Code_Virtual_Ma...

Since that page is a little dense, the higher-level version: PCI supports Option ROMs (OpRoms) - plug in device like a NIC or a GPU, your BIOS actually loads compiled code from it and executes it on the CPU. In many systems for example PXE booting (net booting) is actually a function of the NIC, executing code on the CPU to load an operating system. We're talking actual x86/x86_64 machine code here running in the privileged pre-boot environment. Not portable or secure in any way. OpRoms _may_ now be checked for SecureBoot signatures on systems where that's set up properly at least.

EFI ByteCode (EBC) is meant to help at least the portability side. I'm not sure if anybody is actually delivering devices with EBC OpRoms yet though. I'm also not sure if anybody is looking at using the EBC VM to sandbox untrusted OpRoms.

Does this imply that plugging in a NIC into an ARM or PowerPC machine might fail to pxe boot if the manufacturer hasn’t prepped code for those platforms?

Not "might" - will.

That's why there were separate "Mac editions" of certain cards (like GPUs) - the Option ROMs were different to support the Mac's frankensteined PPC OpenFirmware-like setup, and later to provide early EFI option roms when most x86-targeting cards were shipping with classic VBIOS.

EDIT: And while there was x86 emulator on many firmwares, it was often not enough to run everything, and x86 NIC firmware won't work for netbooting a PPC machine

"Yet"? The only card anyone's ever found that shipped with an EBC option ROM was from about 20 years ago, nobody's migrating to EBC and the general approach is to just emulate the x86 instructions instead. And secure boot has been verifying option ROMs since 2012.

The network is the computer

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