The Unabridged Pentium 4 IA32 Processor Genealogy

The Basic Elements of SMM

The following is a list of the basic elements associated with SMM:

• The processor's SMI# input.

• The APIC SMI IPI message.

• The chipset/system board logic responsible for monitoring conditions within the platform that might required an invocation of the SM handler program.

• The chipset's ability to assert SMI# to the processor to invoke the SMI program.

• The chipset's ability to send an SMI IPI message to the processor to invoke the SMI program.

• The Resume (RSM) instruction.

• The SM RAM area.

• The 512-byte processor context state save/restore area (i.e., data structure) in memory.

• The SMI Acknowledge message was added to the message repertoire of the Special transaction.

• The processor's SMMEM# output (also referred to as the EFX4# output). ...