Check this out, Intel are coming up/proposing a new spec to replace BIOS, in theory the newer version of BIOS will be written in C and will be 32bit flat code which makes it easier to expand the BIOS so it looks like the days of 16bit legacy bios will be gone... and hence no booting up in 16bit and having to manually switch to protected mode.... sounds interesting
http://developer.intel.com/technology/efi/
Regards,
Tommie.