Patent ID: 7610481

Claim:
A method for booting first and second partitions in a processing system that has multiple processing units, the method comprising: during an initialization process for the processing system: copying software to a sequestered area of memory in the processing system; configuring the processing system to prevent a first partition of the processing system from accessing the sequestered area of memory; using the software in the sequestered area of memory and a second processing unit of the processing system to boot a second partition of the processing system; using an operating system (OS) and a first processing unit of the processing system to boot the first partition of the processing system; creating a first basic input/output system (BIOS) region for the first partition; creating a second BIOS region for the second partition; storing substantially matching copies of BIOS code in the first and second BIOS regions; and when executing the BIOS code in the second partition, automatically determining an execution path, based on an attribute of the second processing unit, wherein the operation of automatically determining the execution path comprises: automatically determining whether the BIOS code is executing on an application processor; and if the BIOS code is executing on the application processor, skipping instructions for enumerating devices.