ACPI Specification 6.3---12 ACPI Embedded Controller Interface Specification

    ACPI defines a standard hardware and software communications interface between an OS driver and an embedded controller. This allows any OS to provide a standard driver that can directly communicate with an embedded controller in the system, thus allowing other drivers within the system to communicate with and use the resources of system embedded controllers. This in turn enables the OEM to provide platform features that the OS OSPM and applications can take advantage of.

    ACPI在OS驱动程序和嵌入式控制器(EC)之间定义了一个标准的硬件和软件通信接口。这允许任何操作系统提供一个可以直接与系统中的嵌入式控制器通信的标准驱动程序，从而允许系统中的其他驱动程序与系统嵌入式控制器通信并使用系统嵌入式控制器的资源。这反过来又使OEM能够提供OS OSPM和应用程序可以利用的平台特性。

    ACPI also defines a standard hardware and software communications interface between an OS driver and an Embedded Controller-based SMB-HC (EC-SMB-HC).

    ACPI 同样定义了一组标准的硬件、软件通信接口在OS驱动程序和EC之间（基于SMB-HC或者说是EC-SMB-HC架构）。EC-SMB-HC为EC与host的连接关系

    The ACPI standard supports multiple embedded controllers in a system, each with its own resources. Each embedded controller has a flat byte-addressable I/O space, currently defined as 256 bytes. Features implemented in the embedded controller have an event “query” mechanism that allows feature hardware implemented by the embedded controller to gain the attention of an OS driver or ASL/AML code handler. The interface has been specified to work on the most popular embedded controllers on the market today, only requiring changes in the way the embedded controller is “wired” to the host interface.

ACPI标准支持系统中有多个EC，每个EC都有自己的资源。每个EC都有一个平坦的字节寻址的I/O空间，目前定义为256字节（EC RAM）。EC所实现的特性中有一个查询机制“query”，它允许硬件设备通过EC来获得OS驱动程序或者ASL/AML code handler的注意（通知）去实现特性化。接口已经被指定用于当今市场上最流行的EC，只要求改变EC与主机接口的“连接”方式。

    Two interfaces are specified:
    •A private interface, exclusively owned by the embedded controller driver.
    •A shared interface, used by the embedded controller driver and some other driver.

以下是指定的两类接口：

1. 私有接口，由EC驱动程序独占使用。
2. 共享接口，由EC驱动程序和其他驱动程序使用。

    This interface is separate from the traditional PC keyboard controller. Some OEMs might choose to implement the ACPI Embedded Controller Interface (ECI) within the same embedded controller as the keyboard controller function, but the ECI requires its own unique host resources (interrupt event and access registers).

这个接口是独立于传统PC键盘控制器的。有一些OEM厂商可能会选择在与键盘控制器功能相同的EC中实现ACPI EC接口(ECI)，但是ECI需要它自己独特的主资源(中断事件和访问寄存器)。

    This interface does support sharing the ECI with an inter-environment interface (such as SMI) and relies on the ACPI-defined “Global Lock” protocol. Note, however, that HW-reduced ACPI platforms, which do not support the Global Lock, cannot share the EC interface. For information about the Global Lock interface, see Section 5.2.10.1, “Global Lock.” Both the shared and private EC interfaces are described in the following sections.

该接口支持与环境间接口(如SMI)共享ECI，并依赖于ACPI定义的“Global Lock”协议。但是，请注意，HW-reduced ACPI平台不支持Global Lock，不能共享EC接口。关于Global Lock接口的详细信息，请参见5.2.10.1“Global Lock”。共享和私有EC接口将在下面的章节中进行描述。

    The ECI has been designed such that a platform can use it in either the legacy or ACPI modes with minimal changes between the two operating environments. This is to encourage standardization for this interface to enable faster development of platforms as well as opening up features within these controllers to higher levels of software.

ECI的设计可以使平台在Legacy模式或ACPI模式下使用它，并尽量将两个操作环境之间的变化最小化。这是为了鼓励该接口的标准化，以加快平台的开发，并向更高级别的软件开放这些控制器的功能。