China Releases 'UBIOS' Standard to Replace UEFI
FunkyLich writes:
China has worked for years to further separate its computing progress from the United States and its tech companies. Today [October 23, 2025] heralds a major development to this end, as the Global Computing Consortium has announced the "UBIOS" global standard, a new replacement for UEFI and BIOS. The GCC's new standard is a rebuilding of BIOS firmware from the ground up, bypassing UEFI development entirely.
UBIOS, or "Unified Basic Input/Output System", is a firmware standard to replace BIOS and UEFI, the first and most prolific motherboard firmware architectures, respectively, that bridge the gap between processors and operating systems. The UBIOS standard was drafted by 13 Chinese tech companies, including Huawei, CESI (China Electronics Standardization Institute), Byosoft, and Kunlun Tech.
The working group claims it chose to avoid the UEFI spec due to the development bloat of UEFI and TianoCore EDK II, the Intel-made reference implementation of UEFI used almost universally among UEFI hardware and software developers.
UBIOS's unique features over UEFI include increased support for chiplets and other heterogeneous computing use-cases, such as multi-CPU motherboards with mismatching CPUs, something UEFI struggles with or does not support. It will also better support non-x86 CPU architectures such as ARM, RISC-V, and LoongArch, the first major Chinese operating system.
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