AMD Working On ACPI PHAT Support For Linux To Expose Health-Related Telemetry

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 12 August 2023 at 05:47 AM EDT. 8 Comments
LINUX KERNEL
One of the new Linux kernel patch series out of AMD this week is for exposing ACPI PHAT, the Platform Health Assessment Table.

The ACPI Platform Health Assessment Table (PHAT) is for exposing platform health-related telemetry to the OS, such as pre-OS platform details and other health data records for information to make aware to the operating system. The APCI PHAT table can also provide Reset Reason Health Records that can indicate information around the cause of the most recent system reset or boot in the case of unexpected behavior.

ACPI PHAT description


While this is about exposing platform health "telemetry", fear not with the telemetry mentions... This ACPI PHAT handling is all on the local device and is not about any remote telemetry. The ACPI PHAT records with this kernel patch are simply dumped to the Linux dmesg buffer for easy analysis by the user/administrator. The Reset Reason Health Record reports will likely be of most interest to users.

This kernel patch lays the foundation for adding the ACPI PHAT table parsing to the Linux kernel and for reporting these records to dmesg. For those not interested in the health-related telemetry, the functionality is behind the "ACPI_PHAT" Kconfig compile time switch or can be disabled at boot-time using the "phat_disable" option.
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