Award Software
More info
- Released
- 1983–1998
- Type
- Firmware vendor
- Successor
- acquired by Phoenix Technologies
The third big BIOS vendor, whose code booted half the clone PCs of the 1990s before Phoenix swallowed it.
Award Software International was founded in 1983 and, like Phoenix and AMI, sold ready-made BIOS firmware to companies building IBM-compatible PCs. "Award Modular BIOS" sat on countless 1990s motherboards, recognisable from its blue power-on self-test screen.
In 1998 Phoenix bought Award, and the two products fused into "Phoenix–Award BIOS," which lingered on chipset boards well into the 2000s. Three vendors thereby became two, and UEFI soon replaced the whole genre.