Inventors:
James L. Walker - Cedar Park TX, US
John J. Hawk - Austin TX, US
Alok Pant - Cedar Park TX, US
John Hentosh - Pflugerville TX, US
Assignee:
Dell Products, LP - Round Rock TX
International Classification:
G06F 9/445, G06F 13/38
Abstract:
In a Uniform Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) environment, a system management mode (SMM) driver and a non-SMM driver may be installed for the same hardware device. Until the SMM driver is available, the non-SMM driver is configured to conduct input/output (IO) transactions directly with the hardware device. The non-SMM driver can utilize native UEFI services to receive a notification that the SMM driver is available. Upon receiving such notification, (or if the SMM driver was already available before the non-SMM driver), the non-SMM driver is reconfigured to redirect all IO requests to the SMM driver, which then conducts the corresponding IO transactions directly with the hardware device. Redirecting all non-SMM IO requests for a hardware device to the SMM driver for the hardware device limits direct access to the hardware device to only one driver, the SMM driver, thereby facilitating the integrity or atomicity of IO transactions.