AwardBIOS, also known as Award Modular BIOS or Phoenix - AwardBIOS, is a personal computer BIOS developed by Award Software from 1984 to 1998 and by Phoenix Technologies from 1998 to 2009.
It was officially discontinued by Phoenix on June 30, 2009[1], however AwardBIOS ROMs that were compiled/released after that date exist (either as updates for older motherboards that shipped with it or third party BIOS modifications). In addition, some motherboards that are based on older chipsets, despite being released after the discontinuation, still shipped with AwardBIOS. This was usually because the manufacturer only had an AwardBIOS source code for that chipset and since licensing a new BIOS would cost money and time.
Along with this, Gigabyte has also made motherboards with newer chipsets (such as Intel H55 and H61) that shipped with AwardBIOS, however this was only because they were developing their own fork of it at the time. Sometime in 2012, they switched to AMI Aptio for their newer chipsets. However some of their newer motherboards with older chipsets continued using the AwardBIOS fork, with the last known motherboard released with this fork being the GA-78LMT-USB2-R2 with the AMD 760G chipset, with its only BIOS ROM being compiled on November 8, 2017.
Award Software
Award Software International Inc. was a software development company founded in 1983 by Rene Vishney and Bob Stillman in San Jose, California. The company's headquarters were relocated to nearby Los Gatos next year. In 1988, Bob Stillman left the company and the company then continued being held privately by Rene (as chairman of the board) and his wife Deborah Lee Vishney (as CEO).
Acquisition by GCH Systems Inc.
In 1993, the company was acquired by GCH Systems Inc. which was founded by George C. Huang in 1984 in Sunnyvale, California. GCH was officially dissolved on December 16, 2023[2], 30 years after the acquisition.
Unicore Software acquisition
On June 16, 1997, the company announced the acquisition of the North Andover, Massachusetts based BIOS upgrade provider Unicore Software, Inc.[3], which has acquired the MR BIOS developer company Microid Research Inc. some time prior.
Merge with Phoenix Technologies and dissolution
On April 16, 1998, Award Software announced a merger agreement with Phoenix Technologies to create a $100 million BIOS development company[4]. Under the agreement, Phoenix would be the surviving corporate identity and Award would be dissolved. The agreement was completed on September 28th of that year and Award Software was officially dissolved on February 9, 2001[5], while GCH Systems owner George Huang became the board member and vice chairman at Phoenix until March 2006[6].
PhoenixNet controversy
Main page: PhoenixNet
In 2000, Phoenix developed an add-on for AwardBIOS called PhoenixNet, which allowed motherboard manufacturers and system labelers to advertise their services during POST, change the browser home page, and automatically install sponsored tools on the system after a clean Windows installation. It was heavily criticized by users for privacy concerns and performance issues on systems with it enabled. It was finally discontinued a year later due to "the demise of the Internet advertising market".
List of known versions
| Version | Release date | POST screen | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| AwardBIOS 1.xx | 1984? | Not available | Confirmed existence by a file of a BIOS version database. No ROM files or pictures are available for it as of now. |
| AwardBIOS 2.xx | 1985 | 
|
|
| AwardBIOS 3.xx | 1987 | 
|
Siemens-Nixdorf fork exists. |
| AwardBIOS v4.00 | 1990 | 
|
Mostly used on motherboards with EISA expansion buses |
| AwardBIOS v4.20/4.26/4.28/4.32 | 1991-1992 | 
|
4.26/4.28/4.32 might have been only used by Gateway 2000/Swan/Anigma. |
| AwardBIOS v4.50 | 1993 | 
|
Not to be confused with EliteBIOS, early versions have blue POST screen while later versions have black EliteBIOS POST screen but with v4.50 version number. |
| AwardBIOS v4.50xx/v4.51xx/v4.60xx | 1994 | 
|
Codenamed "EliteBIOS". |
| Award PowerBIOS | 1994(?) | 
|
Considered as AwardBIOS v5.00 internally by Award. |
| AwardBIOS v6.00PG | 1998-1999 | 
|
Codenamed "Medallion". Also known as Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG and Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG. Code forks from ASUS and Gigabyte do exist. A sub-version called WorkstationBIOS also exists. |
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20100102014331/http://phoenix.com/NR/rdonlyres/41C4EE68-A650-4969-805D-08F8798DF108/0/EOMletter_Award.pdf
- ↑ https://bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/api/report/GetImageByNum/216187144179103006213063034162143116038214189110
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/19971122054540/http://www.award.com/Press/97_6_16.htm
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/19981202192141/http://www.award.com/press/98_4_15m.htm
- ↑ https://bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/api/report/GetImageByNum/012154091108164216177218230180091169153208140005
- ↑ https://www.aaapoe.net/ntu/DrGeorgeHuang/DrGeorgeHuang.pdf (Page 4)