Advanced Power Management, an APIdeveloped by Intel and Microsoftthat allows developers to include power managementin BIOSes.

A BIOS is a built in program that kicks off a computer and then hands over control to an operating system. All BIOSes have version numbers. The latest version is the one with the highest number. Your question is like asking "Is Microsoft Word a later version than the one you have installed." BIOSes are things. These things have versions.

Almost all BIOSes releases after 1995 support disks larger than 504 MB.

Modern BIOSes will automatically probe the disk controller for information about the hard drive. It may still be necessary to enter the BIOS to set the correct boot order, however.

BIOS configuration data is stored in CMOS memory. That is where all the basic hardware settings are kept. CMOS has traditionally been volatile memory, so a battery is required. Newer BIOSes often use NVRAM.