SMBus v1.0 Driver Details

• Provides a Microsoft IOCTL Interface

  • Minimizes transition to/from MS supplied driver
  • Allows existing Smart Battery driver to “just” work

• Multiple SMBus segment support

  • New IOCTL to report on each SMBus segment; uses SMBus Information (_SBI) control method
  • Provides general SMBus segment information

• Manages alerts from SMBus devices

  • Synchronous notifications
  • Asynchronous (processes SMBus Alerts)
    • Runs the SMBus alert process
    • Polled or interrupt driven is transparent to system applications

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The driver provides a Microsoft IO Control interface. This allows the SMBus driver to easily interface under the existing Microsoft drivers without any re-work. As previously stated, the driver allows multiple SMBus branches to be operational within the system. Each segment is registered under ACPI and reports to the system OS using the SMBus information control method. Additionally the characteristics each fixed slave address SMBus device attached to those segments is also available via the SMBus information control method. The driver supports all aspects of SMBus including managing the Alert function. If an SMBus device utilizes the Alert Feature, applications registering in ACPI for this type of notification can receive alert information from multiple branches and multiple devices in an orderly and deterministic way.