System and method for adding hardware registers to a power management and configuration system

• US 20050187719A1
• Filed: 04/04/2005
• Published: 08/25/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 09/15/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Oshins, Jacob, Plante, Stephane G., Pierce, Tony D.
• Granted Patent: US 7,328,279 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 702/19
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4411 Configuring for operating with peripheral devices; Loading of device drivers

Abstract

A system for adding multiple GPE blocks (in addition to the system/root GPE block device) to a computing system by creating a device entry in the ACPI namespace, and using a _CRS object to describe the system resources consumed by the device is described. The GPE block device may then access associated hardware devices through a well known mechanism (either I/O or Memory Mapped accesses). By creating additional GPE block devices within the ACPI namespace, general purpose events may be delivered using more traditional hardware interrupt mechanisms than with existing systems (e.g., wiring GPE blocks together). Moreover, by putting GPE block devices in the ACPI namespace, hardware components having hardware registers may be “hot plugged” to the computing system.

Claims

1-20. -20. (canceled)

21. A computer-implemented method for including a plurality of general-purpose event components in a computing system, comprising:

providing a namespace;

associating a plurality of objects with the namespace, wherein at least one of the objects is associated with a general-purpose event component and a sub-object that defines a set of resources used by the at least one object; and

distinguishing the at least one object from other objects in the namespace that are associated with other general-purpose event components.

28. A computer-implemented method for associating a plurality of general-purpose event components with a computing system, comprising:

providing a first general-purpose event component having a first set of resources and a second general-purpose event component having a second set of resources;

associating the first general-purpose event component with a first data object; and

associating the second general-purpose event component with a second data object.

29. The computer-implemented method of claim 28, wherein the second general-purpose event component comprises a root general-purpose event component, and wherein the first general-purpose event component comprises a secondary general-purpose event component.

30. The computer-implemented method of claim 28, further comprising storing the first data object and the second data object in a namespace associated with a configuration management system.

31. The computer-implemented method of claim 28, further comprising storing the first data object and the second data object within a basic input/output system (BIOS) associated with a configuration management system.

32. The computer-implemented method of claim 31, further comprising reading the first data object and the second data object from the BIOS.

33. The computer-implemented method of claim 32, wherein the first general-purpose event component and the second general-purpose event component each include a hardware device in electrical communication with one or more other hardware devices to detect an interrupt.

34. A computer-readable medium having computer executable instructions for associating a plurability of general-purpose event modules with a computer system, the instructions comprising:

associating a first general-purpose event module with a first data object, wherein the first general-purpose event includes a first set of resources; and

associating a second general-purpose event module with a second data object.

35. The computer-readable medium of claim 34, wherein the second-general-purpose event module comprises a root general-purpose event module, and wherein the first general-purpose event module comprises a secondary general-purpose event module.

36. The computer-implemented medium of claim 34, further comprising storing the first data object and the second data object in a namespace associated with a configuration management system.

37. The computer-implemented medium of claim 34, further comprising storing the first data object and the second data object within a basic input/output system (BIOS) associated with a configuration management system.

40. The computer-implemented medium of claim 34, wherein the first set of resources includes at least one of:

I/O space resources and memory space resources.

38. The computer-implemented medium of claim 38, further comprising reading the first data object and the second data object from the BIOS.

39. The computer-implemented medium of claim 38, wherein the first general-purpose event module and the second general-purpose event module each include a hardware device in electrical communication with one or more other hardware devices to detect an interrupt.