TCG Publishes New ACPI Specification for PCs and Servers
TCG and its work groups were busy in late 2014. The Server Work Group, for example, published the TCG ACPI specification.
As a refresh, “...the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) industry-standard was developed to enable OS-directed configuration, power and thermal management, and RAS features of mobile, desktop, and server platforms. The ACPI spec describes the structures and mechanisms necessary to design operating system-directed power management and make advanced configuration architectures possible. ACPI applies to all classes of computers and is the key element in Operating System-directed configuration and Power Management (OSPM)…”. This definition comes from the UEFI, which now manages the specification (http://www.uefi.org/acpi/specs).
What does this new TCG specification do and why is it relevant? The intention of this specification is to provide a framework for all platform types that employ ACPI. These platform types can draw from this specification as necessary, and may further specify ACPI functionality that is required for a particular platform type.
In a bit more detail, he TCG ACPI Specification covers interfaces to discover and interact with TPM devices according to the ACPI Standard. This version includes updates to support TPM 2.0 devices in PC Client and Server machines. With this updated specification manufacturers of ACPI compliant machines have a standardized way to express the availability of TPM 2.0 devices in their products. The specification also includes the definition of communication mechanism to interact with the TPM device.
More information on the TPM is here,https://trustedcomputinggroup.org/work-groups/trusted-platform-module/. Server Work Group specifications, including the ACPI one, are available here: https://trustedcomputinggroup.org/work-groups/server.
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