Patent ID: 7260752

Claim:
A method in a data processing system having at least two partitions, a platform, partition firmware, and abstracted hardware owned by the platform and not owned by the at least two partitions, wherein the method is for generating a notification of an event caused by the abstracted hardware, the method comprising: responsive to detecting the event caused by the abstracted hardware in the platform, storing, by the platform, the event in a queue associated with the partition firmware before an interrupt is issued; generating, by the platform, an external hardware interrupt for the event, wherein the platform sends the external hardware interrupt to an operating system operating on a first partition of the at least two partitions; responsive to receiving, by the partition firmware, a request from the operating system to read the external hardware interrupt, providing a source of the event to the operating system; responsive to receiving, by the partition firmware, a request from the operating system to query the queue for the external hardware interrupt identifying, by the partition firmware, the event in the queue; and responsive to identifying the event, processing the event.