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Comment by Joker_vD

1 year ago

So I can't change the system's composition? Or do the ACPI/DT only show me the controller chips soldered to the motherboard, but not the devices that connected to them?

Yes, DT is mainly meant to describe non-discoverable hw blocks inside the SoC and the chips soldered to the motherboard. Discoverable devices like PCIE cards or USB devices aren't added to DT (except under very rare circumstances)

Nowadays there is also an overlay mechanism that is used for example on the Raspberry Pi expansion hats, so DT is not always limited to soldered-on things.

On PC platforms, ACPI tables are some mix of static and dynamic data. There's a table for CPU information, and you don't need to flash your firmware everytime you change your CPU, but you do sometimes. PC firmware generally does a PCI scan before booting an OS, and I think some of that ends up in ACPI tables too.