Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.p.

Terry Lee

Shiraz Ali Qureshi

Robert William Dobbs

Martin O Nicholes

Dong Wei

Kenneth Nicholas Konesky

Embodiments of the present invention present an apparatus coupled to an internal bus for monitoring environmental factors in a computer system including: an embedded controller having a processor; an environmental sensor that provides data related to environmental conditions; a reset generator; and a power source. A LAN interface may be configured to remotely access and control the embedded controller. Further, the internal bus may be selected from any of the following: a PCI bus, an ISA bus, a DIMM slot, a SIMM slot, a PCMCIA slot, or a server blade slot. Still further, the environmental sensor may be selected from any of the following: a DC electrical sensor; an AC electrical sensor; a temperature sensor; a humidity sensor; a force monitor sensor; a signal monitor sensor; an electrostatic discharge sensor; an activity sensor; an optical particulate sensor; a Hall Effect sensor; a global positioning sensor; or a whisker detection sensor.

Apparatus and system for monitoring environmental factors in a computer system

In one embodiment of the invention, a method of semaphoring between a system firmware and ACPI subsystem, includes: prior to entering a critical section by a first entity, checking a turn flag to determine if a second entity has a turn to access a critical section; if the second entity has the turn, then checking an In flag of the second entity to determine if the second entity is in the critical section; if the second entity is in the critical section, then waiting for the second entity to exit the critical section; and entering the critical section by the first entity. The method may further include: if the second entity is not in the critical section, then entering the critical section by the first entity.

Semaphoring system between system firmware and hardware manipulation subsystem

An interface for handing off computer system information. The interface has a data structure stored on a computer readable medium. The data structure has fields for component data pertaining to components of a computer system. The data structure is available to be populated by a first program filling in component data using identifiers for locating the component data in the data structure. The first program is able to discover components. The component data is accessible by a second program indexing the data structure with the identifiers. The second computer program is for assisting an operating system gain the component data.

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Antelope, CA, United States of America

Terry Lee