Patent ID: 11934843
Assignee: INTEL CORPORATION
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 17:
18. A method comprising:
decoding a SEAMCALL instruction for a virtual machine monitor (VMM) in legacy virtual machine extensions (VMX) root operation mode; and
performing operations corresponding to the SEAMCALL instruction, including:
causing a virtual machine (VM) exit;
transitioning a processor used to perform the operations from the legacy VMX root operation mode to a secure arbitration mode (SEAM) VMX root operation mode, wherein a SEAM module is hosted in the SEAM VMX root operation mode;
storing a VMM state of the processor to a virtual machine control structure (VMCS);
loading a SEAM module state of the processor from the VMCS;
inhibiting system management interrupts (SMI) and non-maskable interrupts (NMI) in the SEAM VMX root operation mode; and
invoking the SEAM module.