Intel Extensible Firmware Interface - Manual (Page 420)

Extensible Firmware Interface Specification
12-2 12/01/02 Version 1.10
A platform can be viewed as a set of processors and a set of core chipset components that may
produce one or more host buses. Figure 12-1 shows a platform with n processors (CPUs in the
figure), and a set of core chipset components that produce m host bridges.
OM13150
Core Chipset Components
. . .
. . .
CPU 2 CPU n
Front Side Bus
CPU 1
HB 2 HB m HB 1
Figure 12-1. Host Bus Controllers
Simple systems with one PCI Host Bus Controller will contain a single instance of the
EFI_PCI_ROOT_BRIDGE_IO_PROTOCOL . More complex system may contain multiple
instances of this protocol. It is important to note that there is no relationship between the number of
chipset components in a platform and the number of
EFI_PCI_ROOT_BRIDGE_IO_PROTOCOL
instances. This protocol abstracts access to a PCI Root Bridge from a software point of view, and it
is attached to a device handle that represents a PCI Root Bridge. A PCI Root Bridge is a chipset
component(s) that produces a physical PCI Bus. It is also the parent to a set of PCI devices that
share common PCI I/O, PCI Memory, and PCI Prefetchable Memory regions. A PCI Host Bus
Controller is composed of one or more PCI Root Bridges.