this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
2586 points (97.9% liked)

Technology

59653 readers
3112 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@fry.gs
L4s@fry.gs
enu@lemmy.world
2586
Firmware. (seemel.ink)
submitted 1 year ago by b4dm4rk@seemel.ink to c/technology@lemmy.world
216 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] teolan@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What the hell!

How did I understand that just now?

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

possibly because a "firm" is also a word for a business / company, so "firmware" as the chipset software coming from the firm that manufactures said chipset makes perfect sense. at least that's why I never sought an alternate explanation - and I am not fully convinced OP is right, actually.

[–] CaptObvious@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware

History and etymology

Ascher Opler coined the term firmware in a 1967 Datamation article,[2][failed verification] as an intermediary term between "hardware" and "software". In this article, Opler was referring to a new kind of computer program that had a different practical and psychological purpose from traditional programs from the user's perspective.

As computers began to increase in complexity, it became clear that various programs needed to first be initiated and run to provide a consistent environment necessary for running more complex programs at the user's discretion. This required programming the computer to run those programs automatically. Furthermore, as companies, universities, and marketers wanted to sell computers to laypeople with little technical knowledge, greater automation became necessary to allow a lay-user to easily run programs for practical purposes. This gave rise to a kind of software that a user would not consciously run, and it led to software that a lay user wouldn't even know about.[3]

Originally, it meant the contents of a writable control store (a small specialized high-speed memory), containing microcode that defined and implemented the computer's instruction set, and that could be reloaded to specialize or modify the instructions that the central processing unit (CPU) could execute. As originally used, firmware contrasted with hardware (the CPU itself) and software (normal instructions executing on a CPU). It was not composed of CPU machine instructions, but of lower-level microcode involved in the implementation of machine instructions. It existed on the boundary between hardware and software; thus the name firmware. Over time, popular usage extended the word firmware to denote any computer program that is tightly linked to hardware, including BIOS on PCs, boot firmware on smartphones, computer peripherals, or the control systems on simple consumer electronic devices such as microwave ovens, remote controls.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But firmware doesn't have to be from the firm that manufacturers said chipset. Third party firmware is a common thing.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

see that's something that makes perfect sense but that I wasn't actually aware of... Sorry for the late reaction, lemmy.world had enough server problems that I didn't see my notifications in > 2 weeks...