US Patent 7577860 Processor specific BIOS interface for power management

Processor power management capabilities that enable an operating system kernel to interact with a plurality of ACPI-compliant computing devices to manage processor power using a generic processor description. Specifications of power processor management capabilities of processor types are stored in data structures, i.e., objects. Each object contains a control value field and a control mask field. The kernel loads a generic processor driver and objects for each processor type enabling the kernel to respond to power management events such as processor utilization and processor operating temperature events. In response to a power management event, the kernel calculates a desired processor performance state; sets bits in the control mask field to describe the desired processor performance state; and passes the control mask to the generic processor driver which controls the processor. Responses to power management events include adjusting processor voltage and/or adjusting processor frequency.