Providing dedicated resources for a system management mode of a processor
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsSarathy Jayakumar, Ashok Raj, John G. Holm, Narayan Ranganathan, Mohan J. Kumar, Sergiu D. Ghetie
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Abstract
In one embodiment, a processor includes a plurality of cores including a first core to be reserved for execution in a protected domain, the first core to be hidden from an operating system. The processor may further include a filter coupled to the plurality of cores, where the filter includes a plurality of fields each associated with one of the plurality of cores to indicate whether an interrupt of the protected domain is to be directed to the corresponding core. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
Claims23
A processor comprising:
- a plurality of cores including a first core to be reserved for execution in a protected domain for a boot cycle, the boot cycle extending until a next reset of a system including the processor, the first core to be hidden from an operating system (OS);
- and
- a filter coupled to the plurality of cores, the filter including a plurality of fields each associated with one of the plurality of cores to indicate whether an interrupt of the protected domain is to be directed to the corresponding core.
A machine-readable medium having stored thereon instructions, which if performed by a machine cause the machine to perform a method comprising:
- identifying a first core of a plurality of cores of a multicore processor to be a system management service processor;
- updating a configuration table to identify the first core as the system management service processor to cause the first core to be reserved in a system management mode domain for a boot cycle, the boot cycle extending until a next reset of a system including the multicore processor, wherein the configuration table update is to cause the first core to remain hidden to an operating system;
- and
- writing to a filter to mask the plurality of cores except for the first core from receiving a system management interrupt.
A system comprising:
- a processor having a plurality of cores including at least one first core and at least one second core, wherein the at least one first core comprises a reserved core to be maintained in a system management mode (SMM) domain for a boot cycle, the boot cycle extending until a next reset of the system, the reserved core to be transparent to an operating system (OS) domain;
- and
- a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) coupled to the processor, wherein the DRAM includes a system management random access memory (SMRAM) partition to be maintained in the SMM domain.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.