Operation region describing a virtual device

• US 20060248282A1
• Filed: 04/19/2005
• Published: 11/02/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 04/19/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meizu Technology Company Limited
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Rostampour, Arad, Hamilton, Wendy C., Evans, Timothy J., Thelen, Gregory W.
• Granted Patent: US 7,558,724 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/141
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45537 Provision of facilities of other operating environments, e.g. WINE I/O emulation G06F13/105

Abstract

Systems, methods, and devices are provided for embodiments of the present invention to describe a technique that provides an operation region and associated operation region handler to define a virtual device for extending the functionality of an existing operating system.

Claims

1. A method for virtualizing a device to extend a functionality of an operating system (OS) in a computing device, comprising:

creating an operation region describing a virtual device;

providing a operation region handler instruction set, associated with the operation region, that can execute to implement the virtual device; and

using the operation region to allow machine language instructions in the computing device to communicate with the virtual device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the method includes using offsets within the operation region to define an application program interface (API) in order to extend the functionality of the OS.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the method includes defining an API which machine language can use to extend the functionality that the OS implements in an interpreter.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein creating the operation region includes defining an address, data, and command set of registers to implement an API to use functionality of the OS to call into the operation region handler instruction set.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the method includes executing instructions provided by the operation region handler instruction set to perform a task the OS does not support.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the method includes using firmware to define registers for the virtual device that map to the operation region handler instruction set.

7. A computer readable medium having executable instructions stored thereon to cause a device to perform a method, comprising:

enabling an operation region for a virtual device;

registering an operation region handler associated with the virtual device; and

defining registers associated with the virtual device that map to the operation region handler.

8. The medium of claim 7, wherein the method includes using offset values in the operation region to define an interface through which a 32-bit AML interpreter can access hardware registers in located in a memory mapped input/output address space above 4 GigaBytes in 64-bit quantities.

9. The medium of claim 8, wherein the method includes enabling a 20-byte operation region for the virtual device that is registered when the operation handler is loaded.

10. The medium of claim 9, wherein enabling the 20-byte operation region includes dividing the operation region into five 32 bit fields that correspond to address, data, and trigger registers.

11. The medium of claim 8, wherein the method includes assigning two 8-byte address/data pairs accessible as smaller than 8-byte fields.

12. The medium of claim 8, wherein the method includes:

enabling an 8 byte address field in the operation region which is divided into a 4 byte low address field component and a 4 byte high address field component;

enabling an 8 byte data field in the operation region which is divided into a 4 byte low data field component and a 4 byte high data field component; and

enabling a 4 byte command field in the operation region.

13. The medium of claim 12, wherein the method includes:

assigning an identifying hexadecimal address offset of 0x00 to the 4 byte low address field;

assigning an identifying hexadecimal address offset of 0x04 to the 4 byte high address field;

assigning an identifying hexadecimal address offset of 0x08 to the 4 byte low data field;

assigning an identifying hexadecimal address offset of 0x0C to the 4 byte high data field; and

assigning an identifying hexadecimal address offset of 0x10 to the 4 byte command field.

14. A computing device, comprising:

an operating system;

an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) coupled to the operating system; and

firmware executable on the computing device to;

enable an operation region for a virtual device;

register an operation region handler associated with the virtual device; and

defining registers associated with the virtual device that map to the operation region handler.

15. The computing device of claim 14, wherein the firmware is executable to define the operation region and the virtual device in an advanced configuration and power interface namespace.

16. The computing device of claim 14, wherein the firmware is executable to register the operation region handler with a globally unique identifier.

17. The computing device of claim 14, wherein:

the device includes a hotplug I/O bus card coupled to the ASIC;

the ASIC includes registers for the I/O bus card in a memory mapped input/output (MMIO) address space located above four GigaBytes (GB);

the operating system includes a 32-bit AML interpreter; and

the operation region defines an interface through which the 32-bit AML interpreter can access associated hotplug registers for the I/O bus card in the ASIC registers located in the MMIO address space above 4 GB.

18. The computing device of claim 17, wherein the operation region defines an interface through which the 32-bit AML can access address space located in the operation region defined address space below 4 GB.

19. The computing device of claim 14, wherein the operation region defines an interface through which control methods of an ACPI having a 32-bit AML interpreter can perform 64-bit atomic accesses to the MMIO address space.

20. A computing device, comprising:

an operating system;

an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) connected to the operating system; and

means for using a virtual device to extend a functionality of the operating system (OS).

21. The computing device of claim 20, wherein the means includes using a virtual device to extend a functionality of the OS to perform firmware actions that would not otherwise be supported by the OS.

22. The computing device of claim 20, wherein the means includes extending a functionality of the operation system (OS) without changing an OS implementation of a configuration management system.

23. The computing device of claim 20, wherein the means includes extending a functionality of an interpreter supported by an operating system without changing an OS implementation of an interface associated with the interpreter.