Virtual general-purpose I/O controller

摘要

Technologies for virtual general purpose I/O (GPIO) include a computing device having a virtual GPIO controller driver, a virtual GPIO controller firmware interface, and a virtual GPIO controller. The driver receives a GPIO command from an operating system of the computing device. The GPIO command specifies an operation to be performed by a GPIO pin. The driver sends the GPIO command to the firmware interface. In response to the firmware interface receiving the command, the virtual GPIO controller emulates a virtual GPIO pin to implement the GPIO command. The firmware interface may trigger an interrupt that can be received by the operating system. The virtual GPIO controller may emulate the virtual GPIO pin using firmware-reserved backing memory, an embedded controller, or an interface to a peripheral device of the computing device. The firmware interface may be an ACPI control method. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

主权项

1. A computing device for emulating general purpose I/O (GPIO), the computing device comprising a virtual GPIO controller driver, a virtual GPIO controller firmware interface, and a virtual GPIO controller, wherein:
the virtual GPIO controller firmware interface comprises a programmatic interface established by platform firmware of the computing device; the virtual GPIO controller driver is to (i) receive a GPIO command from an operating system of the computing device, the GPIO command to specify an operation to be implemented by a GPIO pin, and (ii) invoke the virtual GPIO controller firmware interface with the GPIO command in response to receipt of the GPIO command; the virtual GPIO firmware interface is to receive the GPIO command from the virtual GPIO controller driver in response to invocation of the virtual GPIO firmware interface; and the virtual GPIO controller is to emulate a virtual GPIO pin to implement the GPIO command in response to receipt of the GPIO command by the virtual GPIO controller firmware interface from the virtual GPIO controller driver.