INCITS’ T13 Launches Work on New BIOS Interface

The Technical Committee T13 of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) has announced that it will begin work immediately on a new BIOS Enhanced Disk Drive Services 3 (EDD-3) Standard, which builds on EDD-2 to address emerging storage technologies. The standard will provide a BIOS interface that operating systems can use to access mass storage devices.

“In light of important new storage devices, T13 recognized the need to build on EDD-2,” said Kate McMillan, director of the Secretariat for INCITS. “The proposed EDD-3 standard will serve an extremely large market — all personal computer systems utilizing ATA/ATAPI, SCSI, Fibre Channel, 1394, Infiniband, PCI Express, USB, Serial ATA, and other buses to which disc drives can be attached.”

Important features of the proposed BIOS interface include:

• Accessing devices where the host has up to 64 bits of address
  space and the device has more than 28 bits of address space
• Providing data read and write capability
• Documentation for cylinder-head-sector (CHS) BIOS interfaces
• Documentation for logical-block address (LBA) BIOS interfaces
• Support for ATA and ATAPI on several host buses.

“Developers of this standard may identify other interface requirements other than those already covered,” McMillan added. “We encourage any company or individual with a material interest in new storage devices to join T13 and shape the standard.” Details about T13’s meeting schedule are at www.incits.org/tc_home/t13.htm.