Traditional disk

In a traditional PC-style embedded system with a BIOS, this is the simplest boot possible. The BIOS performs all the work for you — it fetches the image from disk, transfers it to RAM, and starts it.

On the other hand, if you don't have a BIOS but you wish to implement this kind of a boot, then this method involves the most complicated processing discussed so far. This is because you'll need a driver that knows how to access the disk (whether it's a traditional rotating-medium hard disk or a solid-state disk). Your IPL code then needs to look into the partition table of the device and figure out where the contents of the image reside. Once that determination has been made, the IPL then needs to either map the image portions into a window and transfer bytes to RAM (in the case of a solid-state disk) or fetch the data bytes from the disk hardware.