How to Read The ACPI Specification

The ACPI specification is a huge documentation. Especially ACPI v4.0 spec. It's 727 pages. The how to read it? It depends. For now, I'd like to focus from the perspective of someone who read ASL (ACPI Source Language) source code. Reading ASL code is particularly rather frustrating for beginners. Here's how to do it:

1. If you're total newbie to ACPI, read Chapter 1. Otherwise, proceed to step 2.
2. Read Chapter 4 - ACPI Hardware Specification briefly.
3. Read Chapter 5 - ACPI Software Programming Model briefly.
4. Read Chapter 18 - ACPI Source Language Reference briefly.

Now, go back to the ASL source code that you want to understand and look-up the meaning of the operators in Chapter 18 - ACPI Source Language Reference. Sometimes, you have to repeat this several times to get used to the operator. Now, let's see an example:

// Define a Lid switch
OperationRegion(\PHO, SystemIO, 0x201, 0x1)
       Field(\PHO, ByteAcc, NoLock, Preserve) {
          LPOL, 1 // Lid polarity control bit
       }

Device(\_SB.LID){
       Name(_HID, EISAID(“PNP0C0D”))
       Method(_LID){Return(LPOL)}
       Name(_PRW, Package(2){
          1, // bit 1 of GPE to enable Lid wakeup
          0x04} // can wakeup from S4 state
       )
}

Scope(\_GPE){ // Root level event handlers
       Method(_L01){ // uses bit 1 of GP0_STS register
          Not(LPOL, LPOL) // Flip the lid polarity bit
          Notify(LID, 0x80) // Notify OS of event
     }
}

In the code above, the words: OperationRegion, Method, Scope, Name, and Field are ASL "operators". Therefore, to know what these operators do, look at the ASL Operator Reference in Chapter 18 (section 18.5) in ACPI specification revision 4.0. There are more things left to be explained to understand the ASL source code above. I'll leave for another time. The most important thing is: now we can read the ACPI specification much more efficiently. Cheers :)

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