LinuxBIOS is a Free Software project aimed at replacing the normal BIOS with a little bit of hardware initialization and a compressed Linux kernel that can be booted from a cold start. The project was started as part of clustering research work in the Cluster Reseach Lab at the Advanced Computing Laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
http://www.linuxbios.org/index.php/Main_Page
Sounds interesting, will dig more when i have the time..