The
<acronym>BIOS
</acronym> (Basic Input Output System) is a chip on the motherboard that has a relatively small amount of read-only memory (
<acronym>ROM
</acronym>). This memory contains various low-level routines that are specific to the hardware supplied with the motherboard. The processor will first jump to the address 0xfffffff0, which really resides in the
<acronym>BIOS
</acronym>'s memory. Usually this address contains a jump instruction to the
<acronym>BIOS
</acronym>'s POST routines.