Phoenix Technologies Ltd., the global leader in UEFI firmware technology, products and tools, today announced it has signed an agreement with Intel Corporation to be its collaborative partner for BIOS. The two companies will jointly develop the new reference UEFI firmware for the Intel code base.

Phoenix will provide on-site engineers who will work collaboratively with Intel across various global locations to create the reference UEFI core code firmware that will greatly improve and standardize the code base support for all future Intel client platforms. These improvements will be included in areas such as tools, re-visioning schemes and other firmware structures that will support bringing customer products to market quickly and efficiently. This jointly created reference standard for UEFI BIOS on Intel platforms will optimize an OEM's ability to meet market demands such as long battery life, instant-on and always connected for ultra-thin client products, as well as reliability, scalability and performance.

Additionally, Phoenix has been selected by Intel to provide engineering support for Intel's server software development platforms. This collaboration will allow Intel and Phoenix to serve their mutual customers with accelerated development time for hardware and software. This joint effort will better enable customers to achieve balance between complex bring up of multi-core chipsets and software design while achieving performance and scalability for server systems.

Phoenix pioneered the commercial BIOS business and was selected by Intel as a firmware partner because of the deep technology expertise developed over 30 years of serving the market. Phoenix's firmware architecture is very organized and highly structured, making it easy to use, readable and extensible. These characteristics are in alignment with Intel's focus on highest quality engineering and technology development and will be extremely valuable as Intel continues their transition to EDK II across all platforms.

"Phoenix has over 200 patents in the US and internationally. Greater than 75% of our patents are in core system software (BIOS) and we continue to provide innovation in this technology space. Through the collaborative creation of UEFI firmware with Intel, our mutual customers will benefit from new levels of efficiency while providing them with current and future platforms that support faster and easier modifications, and next generation product development," said Rich Geruson, Phoenix CEO. "It's an honor to work with Intel on this project, confirming our leadership role in firmware."