Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for updating a firmware package.
Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Software applications and computer hardware components of computer systems today are supported by firmware. Firmware may be implemented as one or more modules of computer program instructions, typically stored in ROM or Flash memory, that support operation of higher level software applications and computer hardware. From time to time firmware is updated. It is preferable to reduce the time needed to transfer, update the firmware, and reboot a computer system so that the updated firmware may be used.