15.4. UEFI Assumptions and Limitations

  • The firmware returns address ranges describing the current system memory configuration.

  • The firmware does not return a range description for the memory mapping of PCI devices, ISA Option ROMs, and ISA Plug and Play cards because the OS has mechanisms available to detect them.

  • The firmware does not return a range description for address space regions that are not backed by physical hardware except those mentioned above. Regions that are backed by physical hardware, but are not supposed to be accessed by the OS, must be returned as reserved. Herein ‘reserved’ is the definition of the term as noted by the ACPI specification as ACPI address range reserved. OS may use addresses of memory ranges that are not described in the memory map at its own discretion

  • Address ranges defined for baseboard memory-mapped I/O devices, such as APICs, are returned as reserved.

  • All occurrences of the system firmware are mapped as reserved, including the areas below 1 MB, at 16 MB (if present), and at end of the 4-GB address space. This can include PAL code on Itanium™ Processor Family (IPF)- based platforms.

  • Standard PC address ranges are not reported. For example, video memory at A0000 to BFFFF physical addresses are not described by this function. The range from E0000 to EFFFF is specific to the baseboard and is reported as it applies to that baseboard.

  • All of lower memory is reported as normal memory. The OS must handle standard RAM locations that are reserved for specific uses, such as the interrupt vector table (0:0) and the platform boot firmware data area (40:0). To preserve backward compatibility, platform should avoid using persistent memory to materialize the lower memory. If persistent memory is used for lower memory, platform boot firmware must report the lower memory address range using AddressRangeMemory and must not report using AddressRangePersistentMemory.

  • EFI contains descriptors for memory mapped I/O and memory mapped I/O port space to allow for virtual mode calls to UEFI run-time functions. The OS must never use these regions.