Len Brown has maintained the Linux kernel ACPI sub-system for the last 5 years. He works for the Intel Open Source Technology Center from his home near Boston.
The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface specification (ACPI) allows Linux to handle a broad range of hardware without requiring custom software. ACPI does this by abstracting platform hardware interfaces for configuration and power management. This decouples the OS and the platform, allowing them inter-operate while they independently evolve.
Linux has included support for ACPI since the Linux-2.4 days, and the major Linux distributors have universally deployed ACPI for all Intel compatible hardware since they started shipping Linux-2.6.
However, the interface between ACPI-based Linux kernel features and user-space continues to evolve. Linux started with an implementation that exposed ACPI internals, and is evolving to an implementation where ACPI is largely hidden behind generic interfaces.
This talk will survey the state of those kernel/user interfaces, and provide a forum for discussing their future.