AMIBIOS 8 is a version of AMIBIOS developed by American Megatrends in the early 2000s and released in October 2001. It was the last commercial version of AMIBIOS and the successor to both AMIBIOS 07.00.xx and 07.00.10, the former based on the newer AMIBIOS codebase (which AMIBIOS 8 is also based on) and the latter based on the older AMIBIOS 6 codebase.
Although it was released in 2001, it was not widely used until 2003 with the release of the Intel 865x series of chipsets (codenamed "Springdale"). Despite this, it was a very popular BIOS solution at its peak and was used on many motherboards released between 2003 and 2011, making it a serious competitor to other solutions of that time, such as AwardBIOS v6.00PG. It was most commonly used on Intel chipset based ASUS motherboards released in that era, but was also used by many other manufacturers, including:
- ASRock
- Biostar
- Colorful
- ECS Elitegroup/PC Chips
- Foxconn
- GIGABYTE (mainly on some server motherboards)
- MSI (Micro-Star International)
- Supermicro
It was replaced in 2005 by Aptio, a UEFI firmware developed by the same company. However, it was still widely used on most systems until 2011, when it was discontinued for Intel's 6-series chipsets for LGA1155 motherboards. The last chipsets with AMIBIOS 8 were the H55, H57 and Q57 for Intel processors and the AMD 970 with the SB950 southbridge for AMD processors (the latter only on the Maxsun MS-A970 Pro). Most systems based on Vortex86 SoCs, some of which were released after 2011, also use AMIBIOS 8.
Development
AMIBIOS 8's development likely started in 2000 or early-2001, with a public beta testing program for it being announced in April 2001[1].
AMIBIOS 07.00.00
Main page: AMIBIOS 7
Due to many similarities found between it and the previous AMIBIOS 07.00.00 (commonly known as AMIBIOS 07.00.xx), the latter being an uncommon release that is usually seen with a preliminary version number ("07.00.xx") and this number scheme being re-used by AMIBIOS 07.00.10 (which is based on a different codebase), it is often speculated that AMIBIOS 07.00.00 was a public beta test release that was still under development and that AMIBIOS 8 is the name for the finished release of that version.
Although the accuracy of this speculation can't be fully confirmed due to the lack of information about the development of AMIBIOS at that time, it is quite possible that AMIBIOS 07.00.00 was first offered to OEMs as a public beta release (especially since AMIBIOS 6 had been the latest version for about 4 years at that point), with AMI possibly planning a final release to replace AMIBIOS 6 sometime after that. In theory, this plan would later be changed and AMI would either release an interim release (which would be AMIBIOS 07.00.10) between AMIBIOS 6 and the new version, or release two versions instead of one (with each being based on a different codebase). In both cases, likely for marketing reasons, AMIBIOS 07.00.00 would be renamed to AMIBIOS 8 at some point during its development and AMIBIOS 07.00.10 would be released as the final AMIBIOS 7.
However, it is also possible that AMIBIOS 07.00.00 was indeed a final release, but was quickly replaced by AMIBIOS 8 for unknown reasons, possibly due to the new PC-2001 standard, which was released about a year after its release.