Quoting from the Egenera official announcement:
Egenera Inc., a global leader in utility computing, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued it U.S. Patent No. 7,032,108 entitled “System and Method for Virtualizing Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) Including BIOS Run Time Services,” U.S. Patent No. 6,927,974 entitled “Simplified Power and Data Connector for Use with Chassis System that Houses Multiple Processors,” and U.S. Patent No. 6,953,232 entitled “Latching Mechanism for Securing a Computer Component into a Housing.”
Egenera’s unique BIOS technology virtualizes the operations provided by standard server BIOS, allowing those I/O operations to be performed to devices that are not physically attached to the server. Specifically, the virtual BIOS accesses virtual console and virtual storage resources necessary to transform diskless, stateless Egenera® Processing BladeTM modules into virtual servers. This technology is a key enabler for virtualizing server configuration while providing the standard BIOS interfaces required by enterprise server operating systems…