SMP and APM

From: Jason McMullan (jmcmullan@linuxcare.com)
Date: Sat Mar 10 2001 - 01:06:31 EST


        I'm working on a BIOS for a SMP machine, and I was
wondering if the following technique would allow us to
use APM _safely_ under SMP for Linux 2.4.x. APM (or -yech-
ACPI) suspend is necessary for a customer's feature, and
SMP support is required.

        APM Idle calls are _not_ supported on the box, only
APM suspend. So we can take a goodly amount of time _doing_
the APM call. (I know about the long AP INIT times) We just
need to do it.

        Besides, it'd be a great start for all those SMP
laptops out there. ;^)

BP - Boot Processor (CPU 0)
AP - Application Processor (CPU 1...N)

APM32 Call Flow
---------------
        * APs disable their interrupts
        * APs save their Local APIC tables
        * APs halt
        * BP calls APM32 BIOS entry point
        * BP gets back from APM32 call.
        * APs get INITed (arch/i386/kernel/smpboot.c:do_boot_cpu())
        * APs reload their saved APICs
        * APs restart interrupts
        * BP and APs continue on their merry ways

-- 
Jason McMullan, Senior Linux Consultant
Linuxcare, Inc. 412.422.8077 tel, 412.656.3519 cell
jmcmullan@linuxcare.com, http://www.linuxcare.com/
Linuxcare. Putting open source to work.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Mar 15 2001 - 21:00:11 EST