Advanced Configuration and Power Interface, a specification that provides an open standard for device configuration and power management by the operating system.
In computing, the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) specification provides an open standard for device configuration and power-management by the operating system.
First released in December 1996, ACPI defines platform-independent interfaces for hardware discovery, configuration, power management and monitoring. With the intention of replacing Advanced Power Management, the MultiProcessor Specification and the Plug and Play BIOS Specification, the standard brings power management under the control of the operating system, as opposed to the previous BIOS-central system which relied on platform-specific firmware to determine power management and configuration policy. The specification is central to Operating System-directed configuration and Power Management (OSPM), a system implementing ACPI which removes device management responsibilities from legacy firmware interfaces.
The standard was originally developed by Intel, Microsoft and Toshiba, and was later joined by HP and Phoenix. As the ACPI technology gained wider adoption with many operating systems and processor architectures, the desire to improve the governance model of the specification has increased significantly. In October 2013, original developers of the ACPI standard agreed to transfer all assets to the uefi Forum, where all future development will be taking place.3 The latest version of the standard is "Revision 6.2 Errata A", which was published by the UEFI Forum in September 2017.
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