Advanced Micro Devices Corporation

James R Williamson

David S Christie

Vilas K Sridharan

Michael T Clark

Dean A Liberty

Jelena Ilic

Cristian Constantinescu

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for implementing a hardware enforcement mechanism to enable platform-specific firmware visibility into an error state ahead of the operating system are disclosed. A system includes at least one or more processor cores, control logic, a plurality of registers, platform-specific firmware, and an operating system (OS). The control logic allows the platform-specific firmware to decide if and when the error state is visible to the OS. In some cases, the platform-specific firmware blocks the OS from accessing the error state. In other cases, the platform-specific firmware allows the OS to access the error state such as when the OS needs to unmap a page. The control logic enables the platform-specific firmware, rather than the OS, to make decisions about the replacement of faulty components in the system.

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

James R Williamson