Patent ID: 8914606

Claim:
A method, comprising: partitioning a computer system into a plurality of soft partitions each of which runs a respective operating system; instantiating a separate respective firmware instance for each of said plurality of soft partitions, wherein each of said firmware instances provides a respective pre-defined firmware interface for the operating system of its soft partition; and in accordance with shared logic that interfaces with each operating system through its respective pre-defined firmware instance, subdividing physical memory resources of the computer system into non-intersecting regions of physical memory that appear to the operating systems as individual memory devices in a spanning namespace, assigning to each of the plurality of soft partitions a respective set of hardware resources of the computer system including a respective set of the non-intersecting regions of physical memory and a respective subset of the spanning namespace, maintaining a configuration database comprising respective specifications of the sets of hardware resources assigned to the plurality of soft partitions, and providing the respective specification of the set of assigned hardware resources to each of the operating systems through its respective pre-defined firmware interface.