ROM is hardware.
BIOS is software that has been stored in the hardware.
ROM (read-only memory) is the physical hardware component in which the BIOS (basic I/O system) software resides. The BIOS consists of machine instructions and data that are stored into the ROM memory device.
Modern systems might use a ROM as the BIOS storage device, or might use EPROM (erasable programmable ROM), EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable ROM), or some sort of NVRAM (non-volatile RAM) device (e.g., flash memory).
The BIOS instructions used to be frozen at the time the computer system shipped, but nowadays, many system and motherboard manufacturers release updates which can be downloaded and stored in the non-volatile memory device, to fix bugs or add features.
Firmware is a term that refers to the combination of the non-volatile memory hardware component, the software instructions stored in that hardware, and the data stored in that hardware. So, firmware is often used to describe BIOS software and the hardware device it’s stored in.
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