5.13 Rolling Bios And On-Line Updates; 5.14 Flash Update Utility; Flash Bios - Intel SE7520AF2 Technical Product Specification

System BIOS
system re-boot. Because of shadowing, none of the flash blocks are visible at the aliased
addresses below 1 MB.
A 16 KB parameter block in the flash ROM is dedicated to storing configuration data that
controls the system configuration (ESCD). Application software must use standard APIs to
access these areas; application software cannot access the data directly.

5.13 Rolling BIOS and On-line Updates

The Online Update nomenclature refers to the ability to update the BIOS while the server is
online, in operation, as opposed to having to put the server out of operation while doing a BIOS
update. The Rolling BIOS nomenclature refers to the capability for having two copies of BIOS,
via the one in use, and the other to which an updated BIOS version can be written. When ready,
the system can roll forward to the new BIOS. In case of a failure with the new version, the
system can roll back to the previous version.
While the exact nature of hardware changes for the support of on-line update / rolling BIOS are
out of scope of this document, BIOS relies on specialized hardware and additional flash space
for this. Flash is divided into two partitions, namely primary and secondary. The active partition
from which the system boots shall be referred to as primary partition. The AMI FLASH update
suite and Intel On-line updates preserve the existing BIOS image on the primary partition. BIOS
updates are diverted to the secondary partition. After the update, a notification flag will be set.
During the subsequent boot following BIOS update, system will continue to attempt to boot from
primary BIOS partition. On determining that a BIOS update occurred in the previous boot,
system will attempt to boot the new BIOS. If a failure happens, specialized hardware will switch
back to the BIOS on the other partition, thus affecting a "Roll Back".
The Rolling One Boot Update feature applies to all update mechanisms discussed below.

5.14 Flash Update Utility

Server platforms will support a DOS based update utility. This utility will load a fresh copy of the
BIOS into the flash ROM.
The BIOS update may update the following items:
− The system BIOS including the recovery code, setup utility and strings.
− On board video BIOS, SCSI BIOS, and other option ROMS for the devices embedded
on the server board.
− OEM Binary Area.
− Microcode Updates.
5.14.1

Flash BIOS

The BIOS flash utility is compatible with DOS, Microsoft Windows (2000/2003), and LINUX
operating environments.
The afuXXX AMI Firmware Update Utilities are required for BIOS updates.
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Intel order number C77866-003
Intel® Server Board SE7520AF2 TPS
Revision 1.2