Internally, ACPI advertises the available components and their functions to the operating system kernel using instruction lists (' methods') provided through the system firmware ( UEFI or BIOS), which the kernel parses.
BIOS, UEFI), the computer hardware components, and the operating systems. ACPI defines hardware abstraction interfaces between the device's firmware (e.g. The specification is central to the Operating System-directed configuration and Power Management ( OSPM) system. ACPI brings power management under the control of the operating system, as opposed to the previous BIOS-centric system that relied on platform-specific firmware to determine power management and configuration policies. First released in December 1996, ACPI aims to replace Advanced Power Management (APM), the MultiProcessor Specification, and the Plug and Play BIOS (PnP) Specification. Plug and Play and hot swapping), and status monitoring. putting unused hardware components to sleep), auto configuration (e.g.
Example of ACPI tables of a Lenovo laptop.Īdvanced Configuration and Power Interface ( ACPI) is an open standard that operating systems can use to discover and configure computer hardware components, to perform power management (e.g.
