China has introduced its own UBIOS firmware counterpart to replace UEFI

Chinese authorities have announced the launch of a new firmware standard called UBIOS, which is intended to be an alternative to the UEFI system that dominates the market. This is reported by the publication My Drivers.

The development is being carried out by the World Computing Consortium, which includes 13 major companies and research organizations in the country. Among the participants are the China Institute of Electronics Standardization and Huawei Technologies. It is noted that this is the first architecture of this level, which is completely created within the country, and it is intended to become the basis for an independent firmware ecosystem.

UBIOS has been given the official code T/GCC 3007-2025. The new Chinese standard is focused on supporting heterogeneous changes, distributed computing models and the design of hardware and software solutions.

Until now, China, like the rest of the world, has been using UEFI firmware, which is a development of the classic BIOS and was developed with the participation of Intel and Microsoft. For two decades, UEFI remained the basis for x86 platforms and gradually spread to ARM servers, personal PCs and the RISC-V architecture. At the same time, the system was regularly criticized for excessive code volume and insufficient efficiency in heterogeneous computing conditions.

Current UEFI implementations are closely tied to the x86 architecture and the ACPI table, which creates limitations for full interoperability with alternative platforms, including ARM, RISC-V and the Chinese LoongArch. Their support is considered partial and technically restrained.

The new UBIOS system is being developed from scratch and provides advanced hardware management capabilities, scalability for future generations of processors and built-in support for heterogeneous computing environments. The introduction of this standard in China is seen as a step towards reducing dependence on foreign technologies and strengthening the national infrastructure in the field of computer systems. Therefore, one of the main reasons for the development of alternative firmware for motherboards can be considered the trade war.