Patent ID: 6990576

Claim:
A multi-platform, multi-operating system firmware for IA-64 instruction set processors, comprising: system firmware for booting up a computer system, the system firmware having a first memory block coded with boot-up instructions, and having a second memory block for storing data; the second memory block being accessible during system boot-up, the second memory block being populated with information corresponding to components of the computer system; a firmware interface table (FIT) residing in the second memory block, wherein the FIT comprises entries having an address, a size, and a type, and wherein a respective address of a FIT entry points to a respective memory location corresponding to data for the type of the FIT entry; a FIT entry identifying a differentiated system descriptor table (DSDT) that describes root system hardware components that are required for a successful boot; and at least one FIT entry identifying a secondary system description table (SSDT) that describes optional system components, wherein a different SSDT is created for each of a configuration for a component type that is present in the computer system, and wherein each SSDT identified in the FIT is retrieved during boot-up time to describe a namespace for active optional system components, wherein different configurations can be accommodated in a same baseline firmware, and wherein different configurations are defined in one or more SSDTs.