Patent ID: 7873754

Claim:
A design structure embodied in a machine readable storage medium for at least one of designing, manufacturing, and testing a design, the design structure comprising: an apparatus for option ROM characterization, the apparatus comprising a computer processor, a computer memory operatively coupled to the computer processor, the computer memory having disposed within it computer program instructions capable of: establishing an isolating execution environment for an expansion adapter of a computer, the adapter having an option ROM containing initialization code for the adapter; executing the initialization code for the expansion adapter in the isolating execution environment; identifying operating characteristics of the option ROM, including characteristics of the option ROM unavailable prior to execution of the initialization code in the isolating execution environment, wherein identifying operating characteristics further comprises identifying a runtime size of the option ROM and the availability of support for ROM sharing by the option ROM; and allocating virtual memory address space in a normal execution environment of the computer to the option ROM of the expansion adapter in dependence upon the identified operating characteristics of the option ROM.