From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Matthew Garrett Subject: Re: Necessity of SMM/SMI use on ACPI x86 systems Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2011 16:34:36 +0100 Message-ID: <20110403153436.GA30667@srcf.ucam.org> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from cavan.codon.org.uk ([93.93.128.6]:55913 "EHLO cavan.codon.org.uk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751048Ab1DCPel (ORCPT ); Sun, 3 Apr 2011 11:34:41 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-acpi-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org To: limp Cc: linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org On Sun, Apr 03, 2011 at 12:40:47PM +0100, limp wrote: > Can anyone advise me if it's possible to write ACPI AML BIOS code that does > whatever it was intended to be executed in SMM? In general, is there any > *strong* argument saying that (at least) current systems cannot completely > eliminate the use of SMIs? It's a turing-complete language with full access to the hardware, so there's no reason why you can't entirely eliminate SMIs. The usual reason not to would be to retain commonality of code for non-ACPI environments like the setup screen. -- Matthew Garrett | mjg59@srcf.ucam.org