American Megatrends Inc. (AMI), a global leader in BIOS, remote management and network storage innovations, released the following statement in relation to recent media articles reporting instances of notebook hardware with UEFI firmware locking up, or “bricking”, after users have attempted to boot into Linux® via UEFI. First and foremost, AMI would like to reassure its OEM and ODM partners, as well as the general public using desktop, notebook and mobile systems powered by Aptio® UEFI firmware from AMI, that AMI’s standard UEFI firmware  - both Aptio® 4 and Aptio® V versions - is not susceptible to this issue.

As a leading independent BIOS vendor (IBV), AMI remains committed to working closely with the global Linux community to assure Linux compatibility on new hardware platforms. AMI has also extensively tested its UEFI products according to industry standards to ensure that it is resistant to this problem. Moreover, standard versions of Aptio from AMI feature an effective “garbage collection” functionality which ensures that NVRAM is able to update variables even when fully utilized. In addition, AMI has recently developed a test procedure to safeguard against this vulnerability, which can also be utilized by AMI’s UEFI customers to validate their Aptio-derivative work.

Subramonian Shankar, American Megatrends CEO and President, commented on these concerns by stating that “We understand that this issue has attracted some significant attention in recent days, and as such want to assure our customers that UEFI firmware from AMI is not affected by these reported problems. Our company’s standard Aptio implementations are designed and tested to be 100% resistant to this issue – although this cannot be said about our competitors’ products or specific customizations done to AMI UEFI firmware by third-party OEM or ODM vendors.”

A utility to test for this issue has been created by AMI and is used during in-house development and QA testing. AMI is making this utility available to Aptio 4 and Aptio V customers in light of recent concerns so they may validate their custom development built on top of standard Aptio products. Interested parties may contact their AMI Sales Representative at 1-800-U-BUY-AMI for assistance.

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