From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754199Ab1F2Wdo (ORCPT ); Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:33:44 -0400 Received: from g1t0027.austin.hp.com ([15.216.28.34]:21670 "EHLO g1t0027.austin.hp.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752657Ab1F2Wdm (ORCPT ); Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:33:42 -0400 Message-ID: <4E0BA7FE.9050607@hp.com> Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:32:30 -0600 From: sreenivasa reddy berahalli User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101208 Thunderbird/3.1.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: tglx@linutronix.de, mingo@redhat.com, hpa@zytor.com, x86@kernel.org, yinghai@kernel.org, Feng Tang , ebiederm@xmission.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: MPS table vs ACPI Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Hello All, Recent interaction with BIOS teams within in my Organization left me wondering if MP table spec from Intel is no more a mandatory one http://www.intel.com/design/pentium/datashts/24201606.pdf Section #8.4.5 http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/manual/253668.pdf Talks as ACPI or MPS table. That means BIOS can report through ACPI tables only. I looked through x86 boot sequence and notice Linux scanning for MPS table in below locations and Linux doesn't seem to go further without MPS table or doesn't know how to live with ACPI only. 1) Scan the bottom 1K for a signature 2) Scan the top 1K of base RAM 3) Scan the 64K of bios Your insights into this topic are appreciated. Thanks, Sreenivas