On Thu, 06 Jul 2006, Vojtech Pavlik wrote:Isn't that vaild only if you actully use ACPI to access the EC? (AFAIKWe are investigating the ACPI global lock as a way to at least get theIt had better, that is exactly what the ACPI Global Lock is supposed to prevent (concurrent access to non-sharable resources between the OS and SMI code). The ACPI DSDT contains information on whether or not the machine requires the Global Lock in order to access the EC or whether it is safe to access without locking.
SMBIOS to stay away from the EC while we talk to it, but we don't know if
the entire SMBIOS firmware respects that lock.
the HDAPS driver does direct port access.)
It better be valid for any OS-side access to the EC, otherwise the ACPI
global lock would be utterly useless. The system vendor would have done its
own "global-lock-like" functionality without the need for an ACPI global
lock specification.
What is not clear to me is whether an ACPI DSDT method is on the "OS side"
or on the "SMM side" of the ACPI global lock.