UEFI and Windows

It’s a bit old (2009) but this UEFI and Windows white paper is a good read:
https://github.com/WilliamLeara/BasicInputOutput/raw/master/UEFI-Windows/uefi_windows.docx

The white paper is an interesting (and short) summary by Microsoft of the relationship between hardware, BIOS, drivers and Windows.

Things I learned:

Fast Boot and Resume from Hibernate
Disk I/O speed significantly affects the time required to boot a computer or load the contents of a hibernation file into memory. The ability to read more data at faster speeds allows the CPU to operate more efficiently and makes both boot and resume from hibernate faster. Earlier BIOS systems use a firmware interface called Interrupt 13h (Int 13) to access block storage devices such as a hard disk drive. By using the Int 13 BIOS interface, software can read data only 64 KB at a time, but the EFI block I/O protocols enable data to be read 1 MB at a time. Windows systems with UEFI can therefore read data more efficiently, which improves boot and resume times.

I did not realize the 64KB vs. 1MB distinction.  Fascinating!
I also got a kick out of this quote:

A common axiom in computer security is, “Whoever touches the hardware first wins.”

Cute!
Microsoft has moved most of their UEFI + Windows content to this link:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh824898.aspx
…however I still like this older document.  Check it out!