Who give a toss about the speed?
Whomever wants to serve a lot of pages, for instance, without breaking the bank in the process?
LMFTFY:
Number of BIOS updates I've ever installed on my computer: 0.
Number of BIOS updates I've knowingly installed on my computer (bear in mind, your vendor could have it pre-installed, the NSA could install it on transit to the store, the evil maid on the hotel could have installed it while you were at the pool, etc)
Number of processes from the BIOS still running after the boot process finished: 0.
Number of processes from the BIOS that I know that are still running after the boot process finished (you don't think a spy process from the BIOS would be visible to your OS's pstools, do you?)
Friction is a drag.