Method and apparatus for quick resumption where the system may forego initialization of at least one memory range identified in the resume descriptor

A processing system comprising:

• a processor;
• a machine-accessible medium responsive to the processor;
• and
• instructions in the machine accessible medium, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processing system, cause the processing system to perform operations comprising:
• during a process of transitioning the processing system from inactive mode to active mode, automatically determining whether an initialization task has been assigned to a component other than system firmware of the processing system, based on data obtained from a resume descriptor stored in nonvolatile storage of the processing system, wherein the operation of determining whether an initialization task has been assigned to a component other than system firmware is performed by the system firmware of the processing system;
• and
• performing the initialization task by the system firmware only if the initialization task has not been assigned to a component other than the system firmware;
• wherein the operation of automatically determining whether an initialization task has been assigned to a component other than system firmware comprises determining whether the resume descriptor identifies one or more memory ranges;
• and
• wherein the operation of performing the initialization task by the system firmware only if the initialization task has not been assigned to a component other than the system firmware comprises skipping at least one memory range identified by the resume descriptor when initializing a random access memory (RAM) of the processing system.

An apparatus comprising:

• a machine accessible medium;
• and
• instructions in the machine accessible medium, wherein the instructions, when executed by a processing system, cause the processing system to perform operations comprising:
• during a process of transitioning the processing system from inactive mode to active mode, automatically determining whether an initialization task has been assigned to a component other than system firmware of the processing system, based on data obtained from a resume descriptor stored in nonvolatile storage of the processing system, wherein the operation of determining whether an initialization task has been assigned to a component other than system firmware is performed by the system firmware of the processing system;
• and
• performing the initialization task by the system firmware only if the initialization task has not been assigned to a component other than the system firmware;
• wherein the operation of automatically determining whether an initialization task has been assigned to a component other than system firmware comprises determining whether the resume descriptor identifies one or more memory ranges;
• and
• wherein the operation of performing the initialization task by the system firmware only if the initialization task has not been assigned to a component other than the system firmware comprises skipping at least one memory range identified by the resume descriptor when initializing a random access memory (RAM) of the processing system.