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(grub.info)General boot methods

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How to boot operating systems
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   GRUB has two distinct boot methods. One of the two is to load an
operating system directly, and the other is to chain-load another boot
loader which then will load an operating system actually. Generally
speaking, the former is desirable, because you don't need to install or
maintain other boot loaders and GRUB is flexible enough to load an
operating system from an arbitrary disk/partition. However, the latter
is sometimes required, since GRUB doesn't support all the existing
operating systems natively.

Loading an operating system directly

Chain-loading