18. ACPI Platform Error Interfaces (APEI)

This section describes the ACPI Platform Error Interfaces (APEI), which provide a means for a computer platform to convey error information to OSPM. APEI extends existing hardware error reporting mechanisms and brings them together as components of a coherent hardware error infrastructure. APEI takes advantage of the additional hardware error information available in today’s hardware devices, and integrates much more closely with the system firmware.

As a result, APEI provides the following benefits:

• Allows for more extensive error data to be made available in a standard error record format for determining the root cause of hardware errors.

• Is extensible, so that as hardware vendors add new and better hardware error reporting mechanisms to their devices, APEI allows the platform and the OSPM to gracefully accommodate the new mechanisms.

This provides information to help system designers understand basic issues about hardware errors, the relationship between the firmware and OSPM, and information about error handling and the APEI architecture components.

APEI consists of four separate tables:

• Error Record Serialization Table (ERST)

• Boot Error Record Table (BERT)

• Hardware Error Source Table (HEST)

• Error Injection Table (EINJ)

• 18.1. Hardware Errors and Error Sources
• 18.2. Relationship between OSPM and System Firmware
• 18.3. Error Source Discovery
• 18.4. Firmware First Error Handling
• 18.5. Error Serialization
• 18.6. Error Injection
• 18.7. GHES_ASSIST Error Reporting