System Management BIOS
| Status | Published |
|---|---|
| Year started | 1999 |
| Latest version | 3.1.1 Jan 2017 |
| Organization | Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) |
| Related standards | Desktop Management Interface (DMI) and Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) |
| Domain | BIOS management |
| Abbreviation | SMBIOS |
| Website | www |
In computing, the System Management BIOS (SMBIOS) specification defines data structures (and access methods) that can be used to read information stored in the BIOS of a computer. Circa 1999, it became part of the domain of the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). Before this integration, SMBIOS functionality had the name DMIBIOS, since it interacted with Desktop Management Interface (DMI). At approximately the same time Microsoft started to require that OEMs and BIOS vendors support the interface/data-set in order to have Microsoft certification.
The DMTF released the version 3.0.0 of the specification on February 12, 2015.
As of version 2.7.1, the SMBIOS specification defines the following structure types:
The Linux kernel contains an SMBIOS decoder, allowing systems administrators to inspect system hardware configuration and to enable or disable certain workarounds for problems with specific systems, based on the provided SMBIOS information.
The userspace command-line utility inspects this data. Information provided by this utility typically includes the system manufacturer, model name, serial number, BIOS version and asset tag, as well other details of varying level of interest and reliability, depending on the system manufacturer. The information often includes usage status for the CPU sockets, expansion slots (including AGP, PCI and ISA) and memory module slots, and the list of I/O ports (including serial, parallel and USB).
Microsoft specifies WMI as the preferred mechanism for accessing SMBIOS information from Microsoft Windows.
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