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

From: Matthew Garrett
Date: Tue Jun 23 2009 - 16:23:22 EST


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@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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