Re: [RFC/PATCH 2.6.32] Simple Firmware Interface (SFI): initial support

[Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org>]

On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 04:00:55PM -0400, Len Brown wrote:

> But given that the hardware is fixed (it was fixed over a year ago),
> the question becomes what does ACPI mean on such a platform?
> It turns out that if you look at the ACPI spec and delete all the
> things that could not possibly apply to MRST, then you are left
> with very little.

Right, but instead you've effectively taken ACPI, done s/XSDT/SYST/ and 
then only supported a subset of the static tables and added some others. 
In return we gain two implementations to debug. I'm absolutely fine with 
the concept of a cut-down ACPI, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with it 
being implemented as a single-vendor spec. Right now SFI's a 
reimplementation of functionality we already have for the benefit of a 
single chipset, whereas instead it could have been a refactoring of the 
ACPI codebase to allow vendors to include whatever subset of the ACPI 
functionality they felt necessary.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59@srcf.ucam.org